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May 8, 2026; Anaheim, California, USA; Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson (91) plays for the puck against the Vegas Golden Knights during the third period in game three of the second round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Honda Center. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
Up until a little after 3:00 PM EST on Friday, July 3, the Philadelphia Flyers and general manager Daniel Briere had delivered a relatively quiet, underwhelming offseason.
Then, Briere threw a metaphorical bomb into the entirety of the NHL.
Just after 3 PM, the Flyers announced that they had signed Anaheim Ducks 21-year old top-line center Leo Carlsson to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet, with an $18 million yearly cap hit that would immediately make Carlsson the highest-paid player in hockey.
It’s been quite a while since the Philadelphia Flyers have attempted such an aggressive move. Which means that fans surely have plenty of questions about the details of Briere’s bold decision to try and poach Carlsson — the second overall pick from the 2023 draft — from Anaheim. So let’s dive into all of the big questions surrounding the move, why it happened, and what comes next for both the Flyers and the Ducks.
Does this mean that the Flyers definitely get Leo Carlsson?
No. It does not.
Leo Carlsson was a free agent, but he was a restricted free agent, which means that while he was free to sign a contract with any club once his last deal expired (as it did on July 1), his current team the Ducks would have the right to match any contract offer that Carlsson signed. In other words, they can choose to match the Flyers’ massive offer.
But to be clear: Carlsson has signed the contract. It has not merely been “offered” to him. He has put his name on the dotted line, and this will be his next NHL contract. It just still needs to be determined which team will be on the hook for that contract: the Flyers, or the Ducks.
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Mar 18, 2026; Anaheim, California, USA; Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson (91) moves the puck against Philadelphia Flyers center Denver Barkey (52) during the second period at Honda Center. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
The Ducks don’t have to make the decision on matching immediately. Per the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement, Anaheim has seven days from the time the offer sheet was signed to make a decision on whether they intend to match, meaning they have until next Friday afternoon (July 10) to make up their minds.
If Pat Verbeek (the Ducks GM) chooses to match the Flyers’ offer sheet, they keep Carlsson. If they choose not to match, the Flyers get him — but the Flyers would then have to pay the Ducks compensation in the form of four first-round picks as a result of poaching Anaheim’s player, picks that cannot be traded elsewhere by the Flyers during the seven-day waiting period.
Simple, right?
Will the Ducks match the Flyers’ offer sheet?
That, of course, is the million-dollar question. (Or, to be more precise, $90 million question.)
Verbeek apparently made it clear this week to all 31 other GMs that if any of them had the gall to offer sheet his prized 1C on or after July 1, he promised to match, regardless of term or dollars. Clearly still concerned that another GM might do it anyway, he (likely) leaked his promise to the public as well, via Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.
And it makes sense. Leo Carlsson is their 1C, the highest draft pick (No. 2 overall) of their rebuild, the centerpiece of that rebuild. Without Carlsson, the Ducks immediately look quite thin down the middle, unless Cutter Gauthier can successfully move back to center or Roger McQueen quickly develops into a 1C-caliber NHLer. Trevor Zegras and Mason McTavish are both gone, after all. Carlsson is essential to Verbeek’s entire roster-building plan. The Ducks really should match this.
Or should they?
$18 million per season would immediately make Carlsson the highest-paid AAV player in the NHL, and while he’s already very good — more on that in a bit — he’s not top-5-in-the-league good. He’s probably not even top-30 good — at least not yet. In terms of surplus value added, this is objectively a bad deal.
And then, there’s the raw cash involved. The Flyers heavily frontloaded the structure of their deal and tied the bulk of the money up in bonuses, which they are still allowed to do until September when new CBA rules kick in to make such contract structures illegal. How frontloaded and bonus-heavy, you might ask? According to Friedman, Carlsson will have to be paid around $39 million over the first 12 months of the contract, and per PuckPedia, a whopping $85.3 million of the total $90 million must be paid out in bonuses — lump-sum payments issued at the start of each league year. Those are big checks to write out.
Finally, there’s the cap implications for the rest of Anaheim’s roster. Apparently, Verbeek was aiming to get Carlsson on a cap hit between $10-12 million (that’s part of why it made him a threat for an offer sheet), in no small part to ensure he could afford to lock up the other high-end young NHLers who will be in need of raises in the near future — namely, Cutter Gauthier (a non-offer sheet eligible RFA this summer) and Beckett Sennecke (due for a new contract in 2028). Both have priced themselves into big-money territory already. Can Verbeek afford to keep them all? And even if he can, can he then also build a quality team around them?
The chances are still good that Verbeek ultimately does match the Flyers’ offer sheet. Most of the hockey world believes he will ultimately bite the bullet and do so. But the combination of the degree of overpayment (by one calculation by The Athletic, he’s worth around $13 million at the moment), the raw cash expenditures necessary, and the future cap crunch it will create at least opens the door for the possibility that Verbeek may blink.
It will be a tough contract to afford. But can the Ducks afford not to pay it?
If Anaheim doesn’t match, what exactly happens?
Well, the Flyers immediately add Leo Carlsson to their roster, and they have their current and future in-prime 1C for at least five seasons.
The Flyers would also have to forfeit four first-round picks — their own picks from 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030. The Flyers still possess all of those picks, so it’s a compensation requirement that can meet, but it’s undeniably a high one. First rounders are the lifeblood of a team’s future pipeline, and Briere would lack one of his own until literally the next decade.
But Briere and the Flyers would still keep the Toronto first-round pick acquired in the Scott Laughton trade — a pick that is likely to be in 2027, but could also be in 2028 depending upon Toronto’s decision and whether the NHL chooses to step in with a reinterpretation of the situation. Either way, the Maple Leafs were a very poor team last season, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be improving anytime soon. That Toronto first could turn out to be a very high pick, and make the loss of four of the Flyers’ own picks easier to swallow.
Is Leo Carlsson worth the contract and draft pick cost?
Is Carlsson worth $18 million per year right now? No.
Is Carlsson the kind of star-level-potential player worth overpaying for, especially given the Flyers’ overall organizational situation? Absolutely.
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Mar 30, 2026; Anaheim, California, USA; Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson (91) reacts before the first overtime period against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Honda Center. Mandatory Credit: Griffin Hooper-Imagn Images
Last season, Carlsson broke out offensively after two solid teenage seasons, to the tune of 29 goals and 67 points in 70 games. He also graded out as a positive play-driver at even strength, ranking in the 64th percentile among all NHL forwards per Evolving-Hockey’s RAPM model.
Those are very good results, especially for a just-turned 21-year old. But they’re also not elite numbers. Carlsson is a 1C already, but he’s not a top-tier 1C capable of being the big piece on a Stanley Cup contender.
That said, he possesses all of the tools to reach that level in the future.
This is a player who was pacing for 34 goals and 78 points during a season in which half of it he spent under the United States’ legal drinking age.
This is a player whose primary “weakness” in the lead-up to the 2023 draft (skating) is now a strength, as he graded out in the 62nd percentile among forwards last season in max skating speed per NHL EDGE and the 96th percentile in 20-22 miles per hour bursts — his top-end gear may only be solidly above-average, but he plays at that top-end gear far more than most. He’s a legitimately great skater now who plays with tons of pace.
This is a player with dynamic puck skills, playmaking ability and puck carrying ability. That’s a lot of blue in Corey Sznajder’s microstats player card, after all, and in very important areas.
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And most importantly for the Flyers, this is a player who almost certainly is a center.
At 6’3 and 208 pounds, he’s the ideal size for the position. He possesses the necessary hockey IQ to stick, and the puck skills to drive play through all three zones. He’s one of the best U23 players in the league at the Flyers’ biggest position of need, and would immediately give them the piece they’ve lacked throughout Briere’s rebuild — a potential long-term 1C.
So would it be an overpay? Yes, particularly in terms of dollars — at least unless (until) Carlsson fully breaks out into a bonafide star. But there was always a good chance they’d have to overpay in real dollars to address this 1C hole, especially if they did so via free agency. Doing so for a 21-year old with sky-high potential — especially when the rest of your balance sheet is fairly clean and you have saved tons of cap space — is probably the best method of overpayment possible.
And as for the draft picks — the Flyers have added 32 prospects to their pool over the past four seasons via the draft, and something like 20 of them still appear to have legitimate NHL potential. Their pipeline can take the hit for a few years, especially given the fact that the Toronto pick backfills one of those years.
So for the Flyers? Yes, Leo Carlsson is worth it.
If the Flyers get Leo Carlsson, what would it do to their cap situation?
It’s a good question, and in short, it makes it tight.
Let’s assume for fun that Leo Carlsson does end up a Flyer. Then, the Flyers lock pending RFAs Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale to cap hits of $9 million and $6 million respectively, and hand Nikita Grebenkin a $1 million cap hit as well.
In that scenario, they’d be over the $104 million salary cap ceiling for 2026-27.
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And this isn’t even counting the possibility of a Claude Giroux return to Philadelphia, which while far from done, a team source confirmed to PHLY remains on the table as an option.
Basically, if Leo Carlsson comes to Philadelphia, someone is getting moved out. Maybe more than one someone.
I doubt it’s Zegras or Drysdale. The Flyers seem committed to both, and there were plenty of believable reports over the last 24 hours that they were close on a Drysdale extension anyway. Tyson Foerster just re-signed on July 1, so presumably he’s safe (he doesn’t have trade protection, but it’s hard to imagine them blindsiding him so soon after signing with the club). The young ELC guys wouldn’t open up much cap space. So who gets moved?
Rasmus Ristolainen would be a reasonable possibility — some team would take on that deal if Briere lowered his ask. Noah Cates also strikes me as a plausible option, simply because the Flyers would have an abundance of centers with Carlsson in the fold, and he doesn’t have trade protection. The always-in-rumors Owen Tippett also stands as an obvious option, even though he now has a 10-team no-trade list.
But the Flyers like all of these players — particularly Cates and Tippett, who they see as potential long-term pieces — so they won’t be excited to move any of them, even Ristolainen, who they view as an ideal insulator for players like Drysdale, Jiricek and Oliver Bonk next season. It won’t be an easy decision for Briere. But he’ll have to move out someone to make the money work.
That said, it’s still a manageable situation. Those players all have actual trade value, and Briere should be able to get multiple teams involved in the bidding (especially for Tippett or Cates) to avoid being low-balled. Plus, the Flyers are allowed to exceed the cap ceiling by 10 percent during the offseason, so he’d have time to figure all of this out. It’s doable.
OK, so what about 2027-28 then? As it turns out, the Flyers would likely still be in relatively good shape a year down the road with Carlsson on their books.
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Aided by the projected cap ceiling leap to $113.5 million, the Flyers would have about $9.25 million in space projected to re-sign pending RFA Matvei Michkov and lock down another defenseman for the lineup. Tight, but remember — that’s not counting whatever trade(s) would have been made the previous season to fit Carlsson in the first place. Most likely, they come out of that sequence of events with enough to comfortably given Michkov $10 million — if he earns it this season.
So yes, the addition of Leo Carlsson would turn the Flyers back into a cap team. But it wouldn’t put them in immediate danger of losing a key piece.
What about potential retaliation by Anaheim?
It’s true that Briere probably royally ticked off the Anaheim Ducks by signing Leo Carlsson to this offer sheet. So what’s stopping Verbeek from going after future Flyers RFAs the way that Carolina did with Jesperi Kotkaniemi after Montreal tried to poach Sebastian Aho?
In theory, nothing. But in the here and now, the Flyers’ currently-available RFAs are unlikely to sign with Anaheim and Verbeek, because Verbeek has already burnt those bridges.
The phone call to Trevor Zegras to gauge his interest in signing an offer sheet with Anaheim would presumably be even shorter than the one Zegras appeared to mock in his revenge-game celebration back on January 6, when Verbeek called Zegras to tell him he was being traded to Philadelphia. Drysdale likely doesn’t have quite as much bad blood lingering with Verbeek, but his RFA negotiation with the Ducks was apparently contentious too, and Drysdale loves it in Philadelphia anyway. He seems unlikely to be swayed, either.
The next big Flyers RFA who would be a realistic target of Verbeek’s vengeance would be Michkov. And to be fair, that could be a concern, given the overall weirdness of the Michkov/Flyers situation and the potential for tension to rise if Michkov’s role doesn’t expand in 2026-27. But that just means the onus is on the Flyers to both resolve any lingering tension, and get Michkov locked up to an extension long before July 1 of next year to ward off any potential Verbeek advanced.
You know, just like Verbeek could have done in this situation, if he wasn’t more worried about lowballing his franchise 1C.
Could this be resolved with a trade?
Yes.
Right now, Verbeek is probably fuming. But at some point, if he determines that not matching the Flyers’ offer sheet is a legitimate possibility for him and the Ducks, there’s nothing stopping him from picking up the phone and calling Briere to try and cut another deal.
Perhaps he tells Briere that he’s likely going to match, but he could be swayed to pass on matching if Briere trades him a roster player and another pick for “future considerations” in addition to the four first-rounders already heading Anaheim’s way. Perhaps he offers the Flyers back some (or all) of the first rounders surrendered in the offer sheet to get back current NHL roster players that can help Verbeek’s club win now. Or maybe he ignores the Flyers altogether, chooses not to match, and then immediately flips some of those firsts to another club to try and fill the Carlsson hole.
There’s nothing stopping Verbeek from doing any of them. This “deal” could get far larger than just four first round picks for Leo Carlsson.
What does this say about Daniel Briere and the Flyers?
It shows just how serious they are about big-game hunting to push this rebuild to the next level.
My understanding is that behind closed doors, the Flyers made it clear that they were willing to send a huge contract offer Kirill Kaprizov’s way had he reached free agency this summer — which led to Minnesota making him the highest-paid player in the league just to keep him. Now, the Flyers are doing it a second time with Carlsson. It’s just that this one happened in public.
There’s a good chance this doesn’t work for Briere and the Flyers. Not only is the Carlsson offer sheet a direct attack on the Ducks’ rebuild plan, it’s also a shot across the bow of Verbeek’s ego and backbone. A hard-nosed former NHLer, he’ll likely feel he has to match — or at the very least, that will be his first instinct, especially after blustering around the league all week promising that he’d match any offer.
But even if Verbeek does match and the Flyers miss out on Leo Carlsson, now the entire hockey world — other players, other teams, Flyers fans — know the lengths he’ll go to try and add gamechanging talent at key positions to his roster. This shifts the entire narrative surrounding the Flyers, which was trending in the “they’re too patient, they won’t take a big swing” direction.
This is about as big of a swing as it gets. And it raises confidence that even if Briere doesn’t get Leo Carlsson, he’s going to acquire that much-needed big piece eventually.
After all, if he’s willing to do this, what won’t he try?
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