The Ducks\u00a0announced their decision Thursday on the 21-year-old Carlsson, who is now the NHL’s highest-paid player under the five-year, $90 million deal\u00a0extended by the Flyers one week ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a special feeling, having this pressure,\u201d said Carlsson, who wasn\u2019t told the Ducks were matching the offer sheet until shortly before the decision was made public. \u201cI always wanted to be a Duck. It\u2019s my home, too. I\u2019m just super excited to be back.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Minnesota\u2019s Kirill Kaprizov, who would have been the NHL’s highest-paid player at $17 million.<\/p>\n
Carlsson’s first significant contract negotiations landed him a huge payday \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of business in hockey,\u201d Carlsson said. \u201cI knew it, obviously, but it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verbeek reiterated to reporters Thursday that there are no hard feelings with Carlsson, and the ability to sign offer sheets is a right outlined in the CBA. <\/p>\n
“Being a former player, there’s always an excitement to have a chance to determine your destiny,” he said. “This is a CBA right they have, and I don’t at any point begrudge them, you know, taking that route.” <\/p>\n
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\u2019s determination to improve his roster at all costs. The Ducks would have received four first-round draft picks from Philadelphia if they hadn\u2019t matched the offer sheet.<\/p>\n
Future negotiations will reveal whether Briere significantly skewed the NHL\u2019s valuations of young talent by offering more than nearly all observers thought Carlsson could get. The structure of Philadelphia\u2019s offer sheet also front-loaded Carlsson\u2019s contract with costly signing bonuses in another departure from many NHL contracts.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for the Ducks, billionaire owner Henry Samueli didn’t hesitate to make that hefty financial commitment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatching the offer sheet was an easy decision, as Pat has intelligently left enough cap space to give us the ability to retain Leo,\u201d Henry and Susan Samueli said in a statement. \u201cWe have extremely high expectations for Leo. We firmly believe he will continue his strong growth trajectory and become one of the truly elite centres in the league while continuing to make a strong impact in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the Ducks retained their most important young player, Verbeek\u2019s inability to get a deal done before he was forced into it by Philadelphia seems almost certain to compromise Anaheim\u2019s roster-building efforts for years to come. The Ducks have had a rough summer after\u00a0ending their seven-season playoff drought\u00a0with\u00a0a second-round run\u00a0that stamped them as a near-future contender.<\/p>\n
After keeping the Ducks\u2019 payroll well under the salary cap during his tenure, Verbeek will be spending Samueli\u2019s money at the limit of the cap next season after signaling vulnerability to the league while he managed his crop of young talent.<\/p>\n
Verbeek still hasn\u2019t signed 41-goal scorer Cutter Gauthier, a restricted free agent who is not eligible to receive an offer sheet.\u00a0Anaheim signed defenceman Pavel Mintyukov\u00a0to a five-year, $36 million deal last week, again going well over the expected market rate for a restricted free agent who isn\u2019t on Carlsson\u2019s level of talent, but was widely rumored to be on the verge of signing an offer sheet.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to have some work to do to make sure that we fit everyone in,” Verbeek said. “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.”<\/p>\n
The GM believes increasing cap space will continue to change the market for talented, young RFAs. <\/p>\n
“(It’s) led to different circumstances, and I think, you know, this offer sheet is going to be felt around the rest of the league,” Verbeek added, “So 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 to maintain and to keep pushing forward to help our team win a Stanley Cup.”<\/p>\n
Verbeek parted ways with four key defencemen from last season\u2019s team \u2014 Jacob Trouba, captain Radko Gudas, Olen Zellweger and John Carlson \u2014 and hasn\u2019t replaced them with any significant signings beyond journeyman Nick Jensen. Anaheim also traded Mason McTavish, a key component of its team for several seasons, to St. Louis for draft picks after the centre regressed last season.<\/p>\n
This pricey deal for Carlsson is the latest chapter in Verbeek’s history of antagonistic negotiations with Anaheim’s free agents.<\/p>\n
Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale and McTavish all held out of training camp in recent years when they couldn\u2019t get a deal done with Verbeek, who eventually signed all three \u2014 and later traded them all away. Verbeek did two of those deals with the Flyers, gaining praise for sending Drysdale\u00a0in a package for Gauthier, but getting criticism from Ducks fans for\u00a0giving up on the high-scoring Zegras last summer.<\/p>\n
Carlsson was the No. 2 choice in the 2023 draft behind Connor Bedard, and he has emerged as one of the NHL\u2019s top young playmakers.<\/p>\n
Although he didn\u2019t 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 centres in hockey, so his deal might eventually look downright affordable.<\/p>\n
He scored 67 points in 70 games last season despite being limited for a lengthy stretch by a leg injury, and he added 11 points in 12 games during his first postseason experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to grow as a player, too,\u201d Carlsson said. \u201cI\u2019ve done that every year so far. Trying to get away from these slumps I\u2019ve been having during seasons. Trying to stay at the highest level I can all season long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlsson is expected to be an unrestricted free agent when this contract ends in 2031, putting him in line for another massive payday at just 26 years old.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u00a0With files from Sportsnet Staff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ducks\u00a0announced their decision Thursday on the 21-year-old Carlsson, who is now the NHL’s highest-paid player under the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-790897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}