Jordan Clarkson’s contract terms, and what a player option decides

The collective bargaining agreement defines what a player option is, when it must be exercised and what happens to the contract in each case. That definition is public. When a player picks up an option he is using a right written into a document anyone can read, working to a deadline in the same document.

The amount of the option is a term of his individual contract, and individual contracts are not filed publicly. So the $14.3 million is a reported number sitting inside a published framework: the framework verifiable, the number attributable.

The extension works the same way. The agreement sets how much a club may add in an extension and at what rate salary may rise year on year; the reported $55 million over three years fits inside those limits, which is a genuine if partial form of verification.

Career earnings for an active player are a moving figure, and everything beyond salary is private. He has commercial arrangements, as any player of his profile does, and none is published. A confident total presented as his wealth would be built by guessing at each of them and rounding.

The rule here is the same for a current player as for a retired one: print the figures with a document or an announcement behind them, name where each came from, and leave the rest alone. When the next contract is announced, this page will carry that announcement and say who made it.