Ducks match Leo Carlsson's 5-year, $90 million offer sheet from Flyers, making him highest-paid player in NHL history
We already knew Leo Carlsson was going to become the highest-paid player in NHL history. On Thursday, the Anaheim Ducks confirmed they would be footing the bill.
The team announced it has matched the five-year, $90 million offer sheet the Philadelphia Flyers offered to the star center in restricted free agency last week. Had the Ducks not matched the offer, they would have received four first-round draft picks from Philadelphia.
Anaheim ultimately chose to keep a burgeoning star at a record price rather than hope the picks and salary-cap space deliver similar value.
The Ducks' thoughts, via their announcement:
"Matching the offer sheet was an easy decision, as Pat has intelligently left enough cap space to give us the ability to retain Leo," said Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli. "We have extremely high expectations for Leo. We firmly believe he will continue his strong growth trajectory and become one of the truly elite centers in the league, while continuing to make a strong impact in our community."
On an average annual value basis, the $18 million-per-year- deal exceeds the eight-year, $136 million extension ($17 million per year) Kirill Kaprizov signed with the Minnesota Wild last fall.
Carlsson, the second overall pick behind Connor Bedard in the 2023 NHL Draft, is coming off a third NHL season in which he posted career highs across the board. He ranked second on the team in points with 67 (29 goals, 38 assists).
Signing the offer sheet apparently wasn't a hard decision for Carlsson, though he also described the past few days as "probably the weirdest week of my life," via the Ducks:
"I mean, it was an offer that I think 99% of everybody would sign to. It changed my family and all that too. So it's a pretty simple answer there, but I always wanted to be here too, so I just really hoped they would match."
It's still a shocking number to see for a player who is now being paid like an elite producer before he actually is one. At the very least, it's a sign that Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek made a large miscalculation while negotiating with Carlsson, who said "I'd take that, for sure" in response to a hypothetical eight-year, $9.5 million per season contract during an interview last summer, back when the Ducks had exclusive negotiating rights.
Instead, the Ducks refused to meet him there, then watched him sign for nearly double that value as soon he hit the restricted market. As one NHL executive told ESPN's Greg Wyshynski earlier this week, "I really think it's a fireable offense."
The fun isn't over for Anaheim either, as Cutter Gauthier — the 22-year-old who led the team in points last season with 69 — is also a restricted free agent. The Ducks have less than $10 million left in cap space to sign him, irrespective of any other needs this offseason. Verbeek projected optimism Thursday:
The intention is to get Cutter signed. I think that whatever Cutter comes in [at], I'm going to have some work to do to make sure that we can fit everyone in. So I've got two and a half months to figure that out, and we'll go through that process for the rest of the summer.
