The Anaheim Ducks have finally come to a decision regarding forward Leo Carlsson and it’s one that many fans of the Philadelphia Flyers were expecting, despite remaining hopeful.
After taking nearly the entire 7 days, the Ducks have decided to match the Flyers’ offer sheet and will keep their future 1C under contract for the next 5 years at a lucrative AAV of $18 million.
Ducks GM Pat Verbeek had a tough decision to make between keeping his centre in California for the next 5 seasons or take the Flyers next 4 first round picks between 2027 and 2030. Despite Brière’s efforts in making the contract unattractive, Verbeek almost had no choice.
The hard-nosed GM told the NHL that he would match any offer sheet thrown his way prior to July 1st. Brière made it a 5-year deal because it would walk Carlsson straight to unrestricted free agency, he also added a full NMC in the final year to make it impossible to move him, and $85 million of the $90 million was laid out in bonuses – something the Ducks don’t tend to offer their players.
What further complicated the matter was that Cutter Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov were RFAs as well. With the threat of an offer sheet coming for the latter, the Ducks extended him to a 5-year deal worth $7.2 million per season, leaving them just under $10 million for Gauthier and the rest of the holes in their roster that need to be addressed.
Gauthier is ineligible for offer sheets, so the Ducks have a few ways to find more cap room in the form of veteran forward Alex Killorn and Chris Kreider, who are on the final year of their contracts with cap hits of $6.25 and $6.5 million, respectively.
As for what this means for the Flyers, they go back to square one. They remain with $29.56 million in cap space and Jamie Drysdale, Trevor Zegras, and Nikita Grebenkin need new contracts as they are the team’s remaining pending restricted free agents.
The former two filed for arbitration on Sunday, but that felt more like a formality to keep them safe from offer sheets as the Flyers waited on the Carlsson decision.
There had been rumours before the offer sheet was submitted that Drysdale was on the verge of signing a 4-year deal with an AAV around $6 million, whereas contract talks had seemingly stalled for Zegras due to his agent dealing with some of his other clients like Elias Pettersson and Dylan Larkin.
However, it was always believed that the Flyers weren’t going to have any issues in extending either player, even with Carlsson’s projected $18 million cap hit coming in. With the Ducks keeping his services, the Flyers should have no problem in retaining their RFAs, and expect talks to heat up shortly.
While it’s disappointing that the Ducks kept Carlsson, Brière and company have changed the landscape of the NHL for years to come. Offer sheets could become a more regular occurrence, the market value for top RFAs might have been skewed with the lucrative deal, and the Ducks might be in trouble for the next few years as they look to build around the albatross contract.
Look for Brière to sign his remaining RFAs and continue to be aggressive in an attempt to improve the roster.
