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Leo Carlsson, Who Literally Signed a Flyers Offer Sheet, Says He “Always Wanted to Be a Duck”
Published:
lol –
The guy has to say the right things during the media call. He’s not gonna go up there and say, “man this blows, I was hoping to play for a real fan base in Philadelphia.”
But the bottom line is that you don’t sign another team’s offer sheet if you “always” wanted to play for your current team. You can craft some fugazi narrative that Carlsson and his agent were playing 4-dimensional chess, that they used the Flyers’ offer to leverage Pat Verbeek and those So Cal bums to give him $18 million. But that’s such a risky endeavor because you can’t rule out the possibility of Anaheim saying, “actually, we’re good,” and now you’re packing your bags for the east coast. You’re still rich as hell, but now you’re a Flyer.
The other thing that’s fugazi is that Carlsson, now the highest-paid NHL player, is eating up a huge chunk of Anaheim cap, which complicates things:
As a result of matching, the Ducks now have less than $10 million in cap space, per PuckPedia, with restricted free agent Cutter Gauthier still in need of a new contract. Anaheim took care of business with one RFA during the Carlsson drama, signing defenceman Pavel Mintyukov to a five-year, $36 million deal.
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Keeping Carlsson locks up a key piece of the future for the Ducks but will assuredly impact decisions moving forward due to his massive cap hit. The Swedish centre will account for 17.31 per cent of the team’s salary cap space this season.
So it begs the question, if you love Anaheim so much, and always wanted to stay, wouldn’t you have taken less money to facilitate the roster build and the retention of Quitter Gauthier and assorted talents? This contract puts a strain on the team you claim to love so much, even with the cap increasing over the next couple of years.
Ultimately, it feels like Pat Verbeek is the biggest loser in all of this. Danny Briere took a swing for the fences and the ball was caught at the warning track, but the Ducks’ GM probably could have retained his guy for less money if he got a deal done during the season, instead of letting this drag on into the summer.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com