Connor McDavid Next Team Odds: The Model Verdict Vs. Kalshi's Board
Kalshi turned the biggest name in hockey into a 33-outcome market, and the crowd has an answer it feels very good about: Connor McDavid stays in Edmonton. The Oilers contract trades in the low-90-cent range, and the other 32 teams split the leftover pennies. We handed five AI models the same fetched facts, hid every market price from them, and asked each one to distribute McDavid across all 33 outcomes. They agreed on the shape, staying is the base case, and if anything they were a shade more certain of it than the market is.
The Quick Answer
The market and the models are telling the same story, and it is not a close call. Kalshi makes the Edmonton Oilers the overwhelming favorite in the low-90-cent range, and our five price-blind models blend the same outcome even higher, at about 98%. That leaves a pre-November move at roughly a 2% combined chance across the entire rest of the league. The reason is simple and already settled: McDavid signed a two-year, $25 million extension in October 2025 that runs through the 2027-28 season, and the Oilers market settles YES if he is simply still on the roster on November 1. No other team on the board trades above a dime, and the models give none of them even a 1% real chance. The full model-by-model board, the handful of teams that saw a speculative penny, and where the panel steps slightly ahead of the market are all below.
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The one-look read: The market prices McDavid staying in the low 90s; the five-model panel blends the same outcome at 98%, so the machines see a trade before November as even less live than the crowd does. There is no dark horse here, the panel refuses to give any rival team a full percentage point.
New to Kalshi event markets? Start with our plain-English guide to how to bet NHL on Kalshi for how a cent price becomes a probability and how these contracts settle.
The Market
| Venue | Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state, as of August 2026) |
| The Event | "What will be Connor McDavid's next team?" sold as 33 mutually-exclusive yes/no contracts, one per NHL team plus a "Retires / No Team" bucket |
| The Contract | Each market resolves YES if that team is McDavid's next team before November 1, 2026. Per Kalshi's settlement rules, if he remains on his issuance-date team (Edmonton) on November 1, the Edmonton market resolves YES |
| Settles | Early if a move occurs; otherwise the board is scheduled to expire around November 1, 2026 |
| Prices Below As Of | August 3, 2026 (last-trade snapshot on a thin, quiet board; prices on this page refresh during any news wave) |
The Setup: A Captain Who Already Signed
What makes most "next team" markets interesting is real uncertainty. This one is interesting for the opposite reason: the biggest star in the sport has a question mark next to his name on a betting board, and the honest answer is that there is barely a question at all. Our models received this context as verified, dated facts, and nothing about the prices:
- He Already Re-Signed, Almost A Year Ago. McDavid signed a two-year, $25 million extension (a $12.5 million average) with Edmonton on October 6, 2025. The deal begins with the 2026-27 season and runs through 2027-28, so he does not reach unrestricted free agency until the summer of 2028. This board is not a "will he stay" question, it is a "will he be traded or leave before November 1" question.
- There Is No Trade Smoke. As of July 2026 reporting, there is no active trade speculation and no trade request. The only forward-looking McDavid storyline is his next contract in 2028, not this one.
- He Is The Franchise, In His Prime. McDavid is 29, healthy, the Oilers' captain, and has led Edmonton to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. He has twice taken below-market money specifically to help the team build around him.
- The Settlement Rule Does The Rest. Because the Oilers market pays out if McDavid is simply still on the roster on November 1, the outcome does not require a new signing or any news at all. It requires nothing to happen, which is the most common thing that happens.
The models weighed all of that and reached the same conclusion five different ways. As our Opus seat put it, "a franchise cornerstone does not sign a fresh extension and get traded months later without any reported dispute." A signed captain, no trade request, and a rule that rewards inertia is about as close to a settled market as a "next team" board gets.
The Board
The mobile-friendly view. Edmonton is the market, and everything else is noise on a thin book.
| Outcome | Note | Market | AI blend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edmonton Oilers (Stays) | Signed through 2027-28; settles YES if he stays | 94C Last (89 Bid / 94 Ask) | 98% |
| Philadelphia Flyers | ~1,231 speculative contracts traded, still a long shot | 9C | <1% |
| Anaheim Ducks | Thin (66 contracts) | 10C | <1% |
| Boston Bruins | Thin (53 contracts) | 10C | <1% |
| New York Rangers | Thin (47 contracts) | 10C | <1% |
| Retires / No Team | Healthy 29-year-old, just signed | <1C | <1% |
| Every Other Team (27) | Untraded 10-cent ask floor, not a real price | <1C* | <1% |
*Most of the board has never traded. Those contracts sit at a 10-cent untraded ask floor, which is a placeholder, not a 10% chance. See "How to Read a Next-Team Market" below.
Every Seat's Number: All 33 Outcomes
Every model scored the whole field price-blind, and each column is a proper distribution (its numbers sum to about 100). These are the post-revision (round two) figures, sorted by the blended estimate.
| Outcome | Market | Opus | Sonnet | GLM | Kimi | DeepSeek | Blend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edmonton Oilers (Stays) | 94C | 98 | 97 | 98 | 98 | 99 | 98% |
| New York Rangers | 10C | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Anaheim Ducks | 10C | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Boston Bruins | 10C | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Philadelphia Flyers | 9C | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Carolina Hurricanes | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Colorado Avalanche | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Florida Panthers | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Vegas Golden Knights | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Retires / No Team | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Buffalo Sabres | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Calgary Flames | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Chicago Blackhawks | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Dallas Stars | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Detroit Red Wings | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Los Angeles Kings | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Minnesota Wild | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Montreal Canadiens | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Nashville Predators | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| New Jersey Devils | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| New York Islanders | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Ottawa Senators | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| San Jose Sharks | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Seattle Kraken | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| St. Louis Blues | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Utah Mammoths | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Vancouver Canucks | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Washington Capitals | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
| Winnipeg Jets | <1C* | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1% |
These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. The models were scored without seeing any market prices, and they are graded against real settlements all summer and are wrong regularly. Event contracts are for adults 18 and older where legal.
Every number in this piece gets graded in public once the market settles. You can see how this lane has done on past calls on the full graded scoreboard, which is our standing record of hits and misses.
A disclosure on the panel. Our standard Model Verdict panel runs eight seats. Three were unavailable on this machine when these verdicts were generated: the Claude Fable seat (a monthly usage limit), the ChatGPT seat (an expired login), and the Gemini seat (the tool was not installed). So this article runs on five models, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, GLM, Kimi, and DeepSeek, each of which returned a complete 33-outcome distribution. All five scored price-blind on August 3, 2026, then read one another's anonymized reasoning in a revision round.
The Panel's Dark Horses Are All Near Zero, And Here Is Why
A field board usually hides a live long shot or two. This one does not, and that absence is itself the finding. Four teams saw a real trade on Kalshi, and the models still give each of them essentially nothing.
- Philadelphia (9 Cents, Blend Under 1%). The Flyers drew the most speculative volume on the board, roughly 1,231 contracts, but volume is not evidence. No reporting ties McDavid to Philadelphia, and a signed captain has no path there before November.
- New York Rangers, Anaheim, Boston (10 Cents Each, Blend Under 1%). Each saw a few dozen contracts change hands at a dime. On a market this thin, that is one or two traders taking a lottery ticket, not a real read. The models read the same facts and rounded all three to a rounding error.
- Retires / No Team (Blend Under 1%). He is 29, healthy, and just signed. Every seat treated retirement or a no-team status by November as negligible.
The honest read is that the "dark horses" here are the four teams the crowd priced at a dime, and the panel's message is that even a dime is generous. As our GLM seat framed the whole board, the "default outcome resolves to Edmonton," and nothing in the fetched facts gives any rival a real case.
Where The Panel And Market Split (Barely)
There is exactly one disagreement on this board, and it runs in the direction people rarely expect: the models are more confident than the market. Kalshi prices the Edmonton outcome in the low-90-cent range (a low-90s implied probability), while the five-model blend sits at 98%. The gap is only a handful of points, but it points the same way for every seat, which lifted the blend from about 97% on the first pass to 98% after the revision round.
That revision arc is worth a sentence, because it shows the panel reasoning rather than herding. Our Kimi seat opened at 96.5% and moved up to 98.5% after reading the others, noting the peers reinforced "the base rate: signed captain, no trade request, stay-put rule makes Edmonton near-certain." Sonnet nudged from 95% to 97% on the same convergence, careful to call it evidence rather than conformity: all four peers had "independently cited the same settlement mechanic and contract facts I already had." Opus, GLM, and DeepSeek held firm, with DeepSeek noting the peers offered "no new evidence contradicting the base state of a signed captain." When a panel starts high and revises higher on shared reasoning, that is a market the machines think the crowd is very slightly underpricing, in the boring direction.
None of that is a recommendation, and a single stunning trade would rewrite the entire page. It is simply where five price-blind models and a real market land: staying is close to certain, and the only honest debate is whether it is 92% certain or 98% certain.
How To Read A Next-Team Market
A board like this rewards knowing a few things about how it works, whoever you are:
- A price is a probability, not a payout quote. A contract that settles at $1 if it hits and $0 if it does not trades at roughly the market's estimate of the odds. So a 94-cent last trade on Edmonton is the crowd pricing that outcome at about 94%, not a 94-to-1 line.
- The pennies over-round, badly here. Add up all 33 quoted prices and the total sits well above 100 cents, because two dozen no-hope teams are quoted at a floor rather than zero. On this board that floor is a 10-cent untraded ask, which massively overstates the true chances. When you see a dime next to a team with zero volume, read it as "no real market," not "10% chance."
- Thin markets lie. Almost nothing on this board trades, so a posted number can be stale or a single trader's whim. That is why the Rangers, Anaheim, and Boston can each flash a 10-cent last trade off a few dozen contracts while the models see no case at all. Our guide to Kalshi liquidity and reading a thin book covers where that bites.
- A model estimate is not a verdict on value. The panel rating Edmonton slightly above its price is a small disagreement, not a certainty. Contracts settle on what actually happens, per Kalshi's written rules, which are always the governing document.
If you want the mechanics of pricing a hockey market like this, our explainer on how to bet NHL on Kalshi walks through the cent-as-probability math. For the rest of the McDavid picture, our panel also scored the NHL Hart Trophy race, where McDavid sits in a dead heat at the top, and the 2027 Stanley Cup board, where his Oilers rank eighth at about 7%. Availability and rules differ by state, and our state-by-state legality guide has the current picture.
FAQ
Where Does Kalshi Have Connor McDavid Playing Next?
As of August 3, 2026, Kalshi's board makes the Edmonton Oilers the runaway favorite, trading in the low-90-cent range (89 bid, 94 ask, with a 94-cent last trade). Because the Oilers contract settles YES if McDavid simply remains on the team through November 1, staying put is by far the market's base case. No other team trades above a dime, and almost the entire board sits at an untraded floor.
Do The AI Models Agree That Connor McDavid Stays In Edmonton?
Yes, and slightly more firmly than the market. The five-model, price-blind panel blends the Edmonton outcome at about 98%, a few points above the market's low-90-cent price. Individual seats landed between 97% and 99% after a revision round, giving a pre-November move only a roughly 2% combined chance.
Could Connor McDavid Actually Be Traded Before November 2026?
It is very unlikely on the current facts. McDavid signed a two-year, $25 million extension in October 2025 that runs through the 2027-28 season, he is the Oilers' captain, and there is no reported trade request or trade speculation. A signed franchise cornerstone moving in-season before November, with no public demand, is extraordinarily rare, which is why both the models and the market bury every rival team at a penny or two.
Why Does The Edmonton Contract Settle YES If He Just Stays?
Kalshi's rules say that if McDavid remains on the team he was on when the market was issued (Edmonton) as of November 1, 2026, the Edmonton market resolves YES. So this is not a "will he re-sign" question, his extension is already signed, it is a "will he be traded or leave before November 1" question, and the default answer is no.
How Were These Estimates Generated?
Five AI models each scored all 33 contracts without seeing any market prices, reasoning from a dated context card of verified, fetched facts about McDavid's extension, his contract term, and his current status. Each then read the others' anonymized reasoning and could revise. The blend is the equal-weight average across the five. The Fable, ChatGPT, and Gemini seats were unavailable this run and are disclosed above.
Are These Predictions Certain?
No. They are model estimates for informational purposes only, not financial advice. The board does not settle until a move happens or around November 1, 2026, and the picture can change with a single trade.
The Bottom Line
The crowd and the machines are reading the same board and nodding at each other. Both make Connor McDavid staying in Edmonton the overwhelming favorite, both treat every other team as a penny-to-a-dime long shot, and neither sees a real path anywhere else. The only wrinkle is that the five price-blind models are a touch more sure than the market, blending Edmonton at 98% against a low-90-cent price, because a captain who signed through 2028, has drawn no trade smoke, and only needs to stay put to cash is about as safe as a "next team" market gets. None of that is a recommendation, and a single deadline-day shock would rewrite the whole page. It is a snapshot of where five models and a real market agree almost completely, and the couple of honest inches where the machines lean even harder into staying.
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