- Elliotte Friedman says the Capitals should brace for a possible Ryan Leonard offer sheet
- Leonard shares an agent with Leo Carlsson, who just landed a $90M offer sheet from the Flyers
- Read below for the CBA deadline that could speed up a Leonard extension
Leo Carlsson’s offer sheet already knocked the Ducks sideways. Elliotte Friedman thinks Washington should be watching closely too.
On Monday’s 32 Thoughts Podcast, Friedman was mapping out which young players could become the next offer-sheet target, and he kept coming back to Ryan Leonard.
“Ryan Leonard’s agent is the Keators, who just did the big deal with Leo Carlsson,” Friedman said. “Now, this doesn’t mean that everybody here should be running and screaming and worried about what Leonard’s future is. But if you’re the Capitals, you’re looking at this and saying, ‘Hey, we realized the landscape has changed here, and we better be prepared for this.’ And Leonard is obviously a huge part of the Capitals’ future.”
Here’s the 32 Thoughts clip that started it:
The link is Matt and Ryan Keator of the Win Hockey Agency. They represent Leonard, and they just pushed through Carlsson’s five-year, $90 million offer sheet with the Flyers.
That deal carries an $18 million cap hit and made the 21-year-old the highest-paid player in the league. It was also just the ninth offer sheet signed in the NHL over the last 16 years, which is why front offices are suddenly paying attention.
Leonard is heading into the final year of the entry-level deal he signed in 2025, which sets him up as a restricted free agent next summer. He projects as a scrappy, high-scoring power forward in the Matthew Tkachuk mold, exactly the kind of player a rival might try to pry loose.
Before Carlsson reset the market, AFP Analytics pegged a seven-year Leonard extension around $57.8 million, or $8.26 million per season. That number already looks light.
There’s a clock on it, too. The NHL’s new CBA kicks in on September 16, 2026, and it wipes out eight-year contracts in favor of a seven-year max. The cap is also expected to climb to $113.5 million next summer, and with Alex Ovechkin and Anthony Beauvillier the only NHL-level free agents on the books, the Capitals have the room to lock Leonard up.
Washington has about a year to get out in front of it. The Keators just showed the whole league they’re willing to force the issue.
