As the dust settles on what’s been a wild, market-altering offer-sheet saga — the result of which is 21-year-old Leo Carlsson taking the throne as the NHL’s highest-paid player — a question lingers: what’s going on in Anaheim?
It’s been an odd few years for the Californian club. On one hand, the Ducks waded into this off-season fresh off finding some bona fide progress — 2025-26 saw them end a seven-year playoff drought, and win their first post-season series in nearly a decade. Then came the offer sheet.
On July 3, the Philadelphia Flyers took a chainsaw to Anaheim’s off-season plans, tendering a massive five-year, $90-million offer sheet to Carlsson, the Ducks’ on-the-rise star centreman. Carlsson signed, putting his club on the clock. On Thursday, the Ducks matched.
It was a gargantuan swing from Philly. Carlsson’s new deal not only carries an average annual value ($18 million) higher than the recently-signed deals for marquee talents Kirill Kaprizov ($17 million) and Leon Draisaitl ($14 million), it’s also front-loaded with costly signing bonuses that make it even harder for the Ducks to stomach: just under $20 million in Year 1 alone, more than $55 million through the first three years of the contract, per PuckPedia.
But the oddest piece of this whole episode might be the fact that this offer-sheet approach for Carlsson marked the third straight year in which Philly looked to pry a young, core piece out of Anaheim.
In January 2024, the Flyers acquired defender Jamie Drysdale (Anaheim’s sixth-overall pick in 2020) from the Ducks in exchange for Cutter Gauthier (Philadelphia’s fifth-overall pick in 2022), after the young sniper refused to sign with the Flyers.
The next year, in June 2025, the Flyers acquired forward Trevor Zegras (Anaheim’s ninth-overall pick in 2019) from the Ducks for Ryan Poehling and a second-round pick.
Now, in 2026, Philly tried to go back to the well, looking to snag yet another gem from Anaheim’s collection. The effort came up short this time, and Carlsson’s set to remain in Ducks colours. But the ripple effects will no doubt cause chaos around the league, putting pressure on the clubs trying to hold onto the likes of Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini — perhaps even shaking things up enough that another young star eventually becomes available for Philly.
For the Ducks, the Carlsson situation is the latest in what’s been a tumultuous, checkered history for their marquee picks over the past decade.
Anaheim had seven straight top-10 picks from 2019 to 2025, up until selecting at No. 15 in the 2026 draft. And the situations with a fair number of those top-10 picks have gone sideways.
In 2019, Zegras was tabbed ninth-overall by Anaheim. After a stint marked by tense negotiations with the Ducks’ front office — which included the forward holding out and missing training camp in 2023 while negotiating an extension fresh off a career year that saw him lead the club in scoring — he was eventually traded.
In 2020, Drysdale was selected sixth-overall — he held out alongside Zegras during that same 2023 training camp during his own negotiations — and was eventually traded.
In 2021, Mason McTavish was drafted third-overall. Last off-season, his extension negotiations similarly turned into a stalemate, and the centreman similarly missed training camp as his reps tried to find common ground with Verbeek and Co. He was traded to St. Louis last month.
In 2022, the Ducks drafted Pavel Mintyukov 10th overall. Unsigned heading into this off-season, the threat of an offer sheet for the defender — as the Carlsson situation loomed — pushed Verbeek and Co. into signing Mintyukov to a hefty five-year, $36-million deal just this week, granting the 22-year-old a $7.2-million AAV that arguably seems a step above his level at the moment.
In 2023, Anaheim drafted Carlsson second-overall. They watched him flourish, take a significant step this past season — then delayed signing him long-term, before seeing their approach backfire. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Ducks and Carlsson’s reps spoke hours before the Flyers’ offer sheet dropped — the Ducks’ offer was believed to be between $12-13 million, the ask from Carlsson’s team was believed to be around $15 million.
No common ground was found. Now the Ducks are paying their young centre at a level that will require him to become the class of the league to make good on his new deal’s value. They’ll see him become a UFA in just five years, and they’re staring down a cap situation that just got far more complicated.
The two other recent top-10 Ducks picks — Beckett Sennecke, drafted third-overall in 2024, and Roger McQueen, drafted 10th overall in 2025 — are still in the early stages of their careers. We’ll see how the club handles their trajectory. But for the five previous top-10 talents over the past five years, it’s been far from seamless.
Next up for Verbeek and Co. is coming to terms with restricted free agent Gauthier, fresh off a 41-goal campaign, with cap space now at a premium in Anaheim. Thankfully, the young scorer can’t be signed to an offer sheet. Still, the deal is no doubt complicated by the weight of Carlsson’s new contract on the Ducks’ books.
Big picture, one thing seems clear: Verbeek’s legacy in Anaheim will be tied to where this all goes. If Carlsson continues to level up, and emerges as a true, undeniable, top-tier force in the league, if he carries the Ducks to the league’s upper echelon with him, then this all gets lost in the glow of the ascent.
But if it sputters, if this core comes up short and can’t climb that championship summit before it’s taken apart years from now, there’s a fair chance we’ll look back on this stretch — on how Anaheim handled this near-decade run of draft fortune — as the hinge point.