The Anaheim Ducks traded John Carlson\u2019s rights to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for pick No. 192 in the 2026 NHL Draft and minor-league defenseman Kyle Masters. The Ducks used the pick to select center Noah Kosick, who played in the WHL\u2019s Seattle Thunderbirds last season and is committed to the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n
There is no pre-arranged deal in place for Carolina to sign Carlson. The Hurricanes just bought an early chance to speak with the pending UFA before the market opens Wednesday. There are other teams with interest who still want to get involved on July 1 if Carolina doesn\u2019t sign Carlson before then, according to league sources granted anonymity to discuss talks that aren\u2019t public, but it\u2019s believed the Stanley Cup champions are on a list of four to five teams of interest to Carlson, who is looking for a two-year deal in the $9-10 million range no matter where he lands.<\/p>\n
After spending his entire career with the Washington Capitals, the 17-year veteran finished last season with the Anaheim Ducks following a trade at last season\u2019s deadline. Carlson had four goals \u2014 three of them in an April 9 win against San Jose for his first career hat trick \u2014 and 10 assists in 14 regular-season games with the Ducks before adding six assists in 12 playoff games as Anaheim reached the second round.<\/p>\n
The all-time leading scorer by a defenseman in Capitals history, Carlson had a combined 14 goals and 46 assists with Washington and Anaheim last season. His 60 points put him tied for 11th among defensemen across the league. One of those he was tied with, Jakob Chychrun, effectively allowed the Capitals to move on without Carlson.<\/p>\n
A native of Natick, Mass., Carlson communicated a desire to return to a team in the Eastern Conference and closer to his original home base after growing his family in the suburbs outside Washington after finishing his eight-year, $64 million deal. The Ducks, who were interested in re-signing him, surrendered their 2026 first-round selection to get the defenseman in a surprising addition to reward a team bound to end the franchise\u2019s seven-year playoff drought.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had good discussions with Pat (Verbeek),\u201d Carlson\u2019s agent, Rick Curran, previously told The Athletic\u00a0as he referenced Anaheim\u2019s general manager. \u201cI told him how much John enjoyed his time in Anaheim. But his preference is to return and play in the East, closer to family and the familiarity with it. Pat was naturally disappointed but completely understood.\u201d<\/p>\n
At one point, Carlson was open to re-signing with the Ducks, but he was noncommittal about his future at the team\u2019s exit interviews day following their playoff loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI certainly loved it here,\u201d Carlson said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of moving parts to that to properly answer the question. But yeah, I\u2019ve loved my time. It\u2019s a special place here for sure, with some extraordinary talent and a really bright future. That certainly is attractive to anyone, not just myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlson was a first-round pick of the Capitals in 2008 and won a Stanley Cup with them in 2018 while becoming the franchise leader in goals (166), assists (605) and points (771) for a defenseman. He is second to Alex Ovechkin in all-time games played for Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Anaheim Ducks traded John Carlson\u2019s rights to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for pick No. 192 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,2066,404],"class_list":["post-377728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}