- Flyers tendered a five-year, $90 million offer sheet to Ducks center Leo Carlsson
- The $18 million cap hit would make the 21-year-old the highest-paid player in the NHL
- Read below for the compensation package and why Anaheim’s cap sheet makes matching a nightmare
The Philadelphia Flyers just swung for the fences.
Philadelphia tendered a five-year, $90 million offer sheet to Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson, the team announced Friday. The $18 million average annual value would make the 21-year-old the highest-paid player in the league.
Here is the Flyers’ statement:
That structure is aggressive on purpose. If Anaheim declines to match, Philadelphia ships four first-round picks to the Ducks, one in each of the next four drafts. That is the going rate for prying a franchise center off another team’s roster.
The move is a loud statement from a Flyers front office that spent the summer hunting for a young building block. An offer sheet this size, pointed at a 21-year-old center, is about as bold as it gets in July.
Anaheim has seven days to decide. The clock runs out around July 10, when the Ducks either match the terms and keep their young star or watch him walk for the pick package.
Carlsson earned every bit of the attention. He set career highs last season with 29 goals, 38 assists and 67 points in 70 games, then added 11 points in 12 playoff games. Watch what Anaheim is fighting to keep:
Matching will not be simple. The Ducks already re-signed Pavel Mintyukov to a five-year extension and are working with under $10 million in projected cap space, which chokes every move they have left this summer. We laid out that squeeze in our breakdown of Anaheim’s cap crunch and the Cutter Gauthier contract.
An $18 million cap hit dropped on top of that math is a real problem, not a rubber stamp.
Now it is Anaheim’s move. Match by July 10, or hand Philadelphia its next number-one center and take four first-rounders in return.
