The Suns remains confident of re-signing the key defender but May said before the season he was in no rush to put pen to paper.

May has pointed out his previous contracts with the Suns were signed no earlier than midyear and that shapes as being the case once again.

By mid-season, the AFL is expected to officially announce the 2017 salary cap will lift from $10.4 million to $12.45 million, with that to increase to $13.6 million by 2022. The Suns are also after details about list sizes, including rookies.

May's manager Ned Guy said confirmation of the CBA "will certainly help map things out".

The Suns would have hoped a strong start to the season would have prompted May and his management to move earlier but the team remains an inconsistent threat, highlighted by their two performances leading into this weekend's bye. While they crunched Geelong at Metricon Stadium in round seven, last weekend they were mauled by Port Adelaide in Shanghai, with coach Rodney Eade lamenting his men's inability to play "ugly" when required.

Eade, in the final year of his contract, has been praised by management for improving the club's culture but this year he is being reviewed on the win-loss record.

May is an integral cog of the Suns' aspirations but, aged 25, will be desperate to soon play finals. He said in March he would wait and see how the campaign unfolded before opening contract talks but insisted he was not looking elsewhere.

"I've got this new role as captain, I want to see how I go and focus on my footy," he said.

Should he leave, it could have wider implications, for co-captain Tom Lynch is off contract next season as part of the first group of Suns' free agents. Lynch can expect another round of major offers from Victorian clubs keen to lure the former Dandenong Stingrays forward home.

Veteran defender Jarrod Harbrow said the Lynch-May captaincy combination had worked well.

"They have both been really good and worked off each other," he said.

The Suns will have more room to move under the salary cap should Gary Ablett, with another year and $1 million to run on his contract, leave and head home to Victoria. Ablett has all but stated he wants to return to Geelong for family reasons but the Suns have made it clear they will do what's best for the club.