- Leo Carlsson’s agents Matt and Ryan Keator broke down the $90 million offer sheet on Elliotte Friedman’s 32 Thoughts
- The deal is heavily front-loaded, paying Carlsson roughly $39 million over its first 12 months
- Read below for why the Keators turned down Anaheim’s earlier offer
Leo Carlsson’s agents finally explained how he became the highest-paid player in hockey.
Matt and Ryan Keator, the father-and-son duo who represent the Ducks center, sat down with Elliotte Friedman for a bonus edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast on Monday night. They walked through the last 10 months, from Anaheim’s early contract talks all the way to the Flyers offer sheet that flipped the whole thing on its head.
Here’s Friedman teasing the sit-down:
Anaheim matched Philadelphia’s five-year, $90 million offer sheet last Thursday, which locks Carlsson in at an $18 million cap hit. Nobody in the league makes more.
What sold him was the structure. The contract is stacked up front, paying Carlsson around $39 million over the first 12 months. Year one alone carries an $850,000 salary and a $19.95 million signing bonus.
Matt Keator broke down why all that up-front money mattered.
“That’s up-front money. That’s money in your pocket with compound interest, so the value’s even greater,” Keator said. “I think the offer he received was something that he and his family couldn’t refuse. Like The Godfather, he made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
The Keators also revealed that the Ducks tried to sign Carlsson before the 2025-26 season. They passed on purpose.
Keator said they refused to lock their client into a deal he would look back on and regret.
“What we didn’t want to have happen was we didn’t want Leo to sign a contract that he would regret in relation to the marketplace in later years,” Keator said. “Now listen, $80 million is a lot of money, we understand that. But we’re living in a marketplace and operating within the NHL marketplace. Every contract that a player signs affects others around him.”
Philadelphia put its offer in writing on July 1. Keator said Carlsson was speechless, overwhelmed by how much of the money landed as an immediate signing bonus.
Carlsson is coming off the best year of his young career. He put up 29 goals and 67 points in 70 games and dragged Anaheim back into the playoffs, where Vegas bounced them in the second round.
Now the 21-year-old owns the biggest cap hit in the sport, and the Keators made no apologies for how they pulled it off.
