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NHL salary history is being made in Anaheim, as the Ducks have matched the five-year, $90 million offer sheet extended by the Flyers for center Leo Carlsson.
With a day remaining before the 3 p.m. ET Friday deadline, the Ducks elected to match the Flyers’ offer and will retain Carlsson at the record-setting price. The average annual value of $18 million sets a new NHL milestone, beating the $17 million AAV in the eight-year, $136 million contract for Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov.
Unlike Kaprizov, however, the 21-year-old Carlsson is not yet an established star. Still, Carlsson is widely thought to be entering his professional prime, and the decision to match the Flyers’ offer is a bet by Anaheim on his continued ascendancy.
The second pick in the 2023 NHL draft, Carlsson entered this offseason as a restricted free agent. The deal is also frontloaded and based heavily on signing bonuses. As a result, Carlsson’s cash compensation for the 2026–27 season will be nearly $20 million. By comparison, Carlsson just finished an entry-level contract that had a salary cap hit of $950,000 last season.
The Ducks, however, still have about $9 million in available salary cap space for the forthcoming season, even with the retention of Carlsson—aided in part by the rise of the 2026–27 NHL cap to a record $104 million. The Carlsson deal runs through the 2030–31 season, and is now expected to help fuel a salary acceleration for other emerging players, such as the Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini and the Blackhawks’ Connor Bedard.
“Matching the offer sheet was an easy decision, as [GM] Pat [Verbeek] has intelligently left enough cap space to give us the ability to retain Leo,” Ducks owner Henry and Susan Samueli said in a joint statement. “We have extremely high expectations for Leo. We firmly believe he will continue his strong growth trajectory and become one of the truly elite centers in the league.”
Had they not chosen to match the offer sheet, Anaheim would have received four first-round draft picks from Philadelphia.
The Flyers, meanwhile, remain in a period of transition as the status of its ownership entity, Comcast Spectacor, is unknown amid the forthcoming split between Comcast and NBCUniversal.
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