Anaheim Ducks
· 2026-07-04
The Anaheim Ducks are facing a historic offer sheet for their young star center Leo Carlsson, signed with the Philadelphia Flyers, averaging $18 million over five years.
The offer sheet, reportedly heavily front-loaded, would make Carlsson the NHL's highest-paid player.
The Ducks now have seven days to match the deal or lose Carlsson to Philadelphia in exchange for four first-round draft picks as compensation.
This move comes just days after Elliotte Friedman reported that Anaheim had "guaranteed" it would match any offer sheet attempt on Carlsson.
The Ducks had deliberately stayed quiet throughout free agency, making minimal roster additions specifically to maintain the cap flexibility needed to handle a situation like this.
As of now, the Anaheim Ducks are 7th in the Western Conference with a 43-33 record, on a W1 streak.
The front-loaded structure of Carlsson's offer sheet adds another layer of complexity, straining Anaheim's cap situation in the near term.
Matching Carlsson's offer sheet would leave general manager Pat Verbeek navigating other restricted free agents' negotiations with considerably less financial flexibility.
The real play now would be for another team to offer sheet Cutter Gauthier, to a lesser AAV of course.
And now, the Flyers are the ones hitting the Ducks with this huge shot, after the Ducks made the most of the Flyers' previous move, trading Cutter Gauthier to Anaheim in return for Jamie Drysdale.
So the hockey world waits, as Anaheim has until next Friday to decide whether to match the richest offer sheet in recent NHL memory or part ways with a player they have repeatedly called a cornerstone of their franchise's future.
The Ducks entered the offseason with a league-leading $35.2 million in projected cap space, more than $5 million ahead of any other team.
But an $18 million AAV commitment to a 21-year-old, even one as talented as Carlsson, would consume nearly half of that remaining room.
This offseason is so crazy: you can't rule anything out, especially with the Ducks still having several other restricted free agents requiring new deals, including Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov.