The Anaheim Ducks have matched the Philadelphia Flyers’ offer sheet for centre Leo Carlsson, keeping their rising young star at an extraordinary cost.
The Ducks announced their decision Thursday on the 21-year-old Carlsson, who is now the NHL’s highest-paid player under the five-year, $90 million US deal extended by the Flyers one week ago.
“It’s going to be a special feeling, having this pressure,” said Carlsson, who wasn’t told the Ducks were matching the offer sheet until shortly before the decision was made public. “I always wanted to be a Duck. It’s my home, too. I’m just super excited to be back.”
Carlsson signed the Flyers’ offer sheet as a restricted free agent after a year of fruitless negotiations with Anaheim general manager Pat Verbeek, whose typical hardline approach in contract talks with his restricted free agents backfired tremendously this time.
Carlsson’s new contract is worth much more than the league expected the Swedish youngster would get as a restricted free agent, and the $18 million average annual value is significantly more than he had already indicated he would accept. The deal surpasses the salary of Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov, who would have been the NHL’s highest-paid player at $17 million.
Verbeek acknowledged he was shocked by the Flyers’ aggressiveness, and he admitted the entire experience could change the way he conducts business.
“Did we expect the offer sheet to be this high? No. We did not see that one coming,” Verbeek said. “But we’re very confident in the sense that with the cap going up and the ability of Leo to make great strides of improvement and become an elite player, we feel confident that this contract will be a good one in the end.”
Carlsson’s first significant contract negotiations landed him a huge payday, and it might have affected the NHL’s entire salary structure going forward, thanks to the Flyers’ boldness. He emerged from the experience with excitement about the Ducks’ future and no public qualms about the way everything went down.
Offer sheet ‘too good to pass on’
“It’s a lot of business in hockey,” Carlsson said. “I knew it, obviously, but it’s more business than I thought. [The details are] something for my agent to answer more on, but [the offer sheet] was just too good to pass on. I think everybody understands that. I talked to my teammates a lot, and everybody was just happy for me and super-supportive with the decision I made.”
The Flyers failed to land their long-sought No. 1 centre in unusual fashion by swiping Carlsson, but the attempt showed general manager Danny Briere’s determination to improve his roster at all costs. The Ducks would have received four first-round draft picks from Philadelphia if they hadn’t matched the offer sheet.
Future negotiations will reveal whether Briere significantly skewed the NHL’s valuations of young talent by offering more than nearly all observers thought Carlsson could get. The structure of Philadelphia’s offer sheet also front-loaded Carlsson’s contract with costly signing bonuses in another departure from many NHL contracts.
Fortunately for the Ducks, billionaire owner Henry Samueli didn’t hesitate to make that hefty financial commitment.
Still, that decision wouldn’t have been necessary if Verbeek had done a deal at any point in the previous year. The GM claimed he made “serious and fair” offers last September to young cornerstones Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier and defenceman Jackson LaCombe, who took an eight-year, $72 million deal.
Verbeek continued negotiations with Carlsson’s agent this spring, but felt he was “getting slow-walked to July 1,” when the offer sheet could be signed.
“It was surprising, to say the least,” Verbeek said. “I actually feel flattered in a sense that Philadelphia wanted such a great player. It means we’re doing a good job on our end. … Players like Leo don’t come along very often.”
Rough summer
Although the Ducks retained their most important young player, Verbeek’s inability to get a deal done before he was forced into it by Philadelphia seems almost certain to compromise Anaheim’s roster-building efforts for years to come. The Ducks have had a rough summer after ending their seven-season playoff drought with a second-round run that stamped them as a near-future contender.
Along with losing four veteran defencemen and hoping to replace them from within, Verbeek still hasn’t re-signed 41-goal scorer Gauthier, who isn’t eligible to receive an offer sheet. Anaheim signed Pavel Mintyukov to a five-year, $36 million deal last week, again going well over the expected market rate for a defenseman who isn’t on Carlsson’s level of talent, but was widely rumored to be on the verge of signing an offer sheet.
This pricey deal for Carlsson is the latest chapter in Verbeek’s history of antagonistic negotiations with Anaheim’s free agents. Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale and Mason McTavish all held out of training camp in recent years when they couldn’t get a deal done with Verbeek, who eventually traded all three.
Verbeek said he has “2 1/2 months to figure out” how to fit Gauthier under the cap, possibly by dumping a veteran’s salary.
“Certainly we are going to have to do business in a different type of manner moving forward, and so we will make the adjustments that we have to make,” Verbeek said.
Carlsson was the No. 2 choice in the 2023 draft behind Connor Bedard, and he has emerged as one of the NHL’s top young playmakers. Although he didn’t produce points at a rate commensurate with his new salary during his first three seasons, almost everyone believes Carlsson can become one of the best centers in hockey, so Verbeek might be correct that this deal will eventually look reasonable on paper.
Carlsson scored 67 points in 70 games last season despite being limited for a lengthy stretch by a leg injury that kept him out of the Olympics. He added 11 points in 12 games during his first postseason experience.
“I’m going to grow as a player, too,” Carlsson said. “I’ve done that every year so far. Trying to get away from these slumps I’ve been having during seasons. Trying to stay at the highest level I can all season long.”
Dundon names on Cup appear before players
Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon’s decision to include his family on the Stanley Cup has become a lightning rod for controversy online.
Dundon, his wife Veruschka, and children Caden, Dax, Drew, Blake and Tagan are the first names engraved on the historic trophy’s side to immortalize Carolina’s 2025-26 team after the Hurricanes won the NHL championship in June.
The Dundon names appear before any players or staff, including team captain and Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jordan Staal, general manager Eric Tulsky and head coach Rod Brind’Amour.
Joel Nystrom, who played in 38 regular-season games for the Hurricanes this past season, did not have his name engraved into the Cup. The NHL’s threshold for appearing on the Cup is 41 regular-season games or one Stanley Cup final game with the winning team, but teams can petition the league for an exemption.
Brett Jefferson, Marc Grandisson and Bobby Farnham were announced as new investors in the organization on March 12, becoming part of the ownership group. Their names were also left off the trophy.
The Hurricanes offered no comment when contacted by The Canadian Press.
Carolina beat the Vegas Golden Knights in six games for the Hurricanes’ second title.
“I will always remember the top 2 lines of Dundons and how they tilted the ice,” said Dan Katz, a Chicago-based commentator for Barstool Sports in a post to social media website X.
“Putting your wife and kids names on the cup is embarrassing and that’s coming from a guy that is doing podcasts in my moms basement,” tweeted Rob Gucci.
Another social media user with the handle “Duddy Buddy” joked that there were “more Dundons than an episode of Law and Order,” referring to the long-running TV series’ dramatic music between scenes.
When reached for comment the Hockey Hall of Fame said it is not directly involved with the engraving of the Cup, just its care.
It’s not the first time the name of an owners’ relative was engraved on the Cup.
In 1984, then-Oilers owner Peter Pocklington had his father’s name engraved on the trophy. It was later chiselled over with X’s as Basil Pocklington had nothing to do with the win.
Peter Pocklington later attributed it to a clerical mixup.
It appears the practice of adding family members is no longer a problem, however. Owner Vincent Viola included four relatives when the Florida Panthers were engraved on the Cup in 2025.
