The Philadelphia Flyers’ 2026 offseason was shaping up to be a rather boring one.
Sure, trading for Joseph Woll shored up the goaltending, and they essentially swapped out Garnet Hathaway for Noel Acciari in free agency, along with a few other depth signings. But there was no signature move by Danny Briere.
Briere then upset some irritable fans by saying that the Flyers could take a step back during his press conference after July 1’s action, while not completely closing the door on another move or two for his squad.
Mind you, that’s a rather rational thing to say after the Flyers overachieved significantly by lucking into an easy first-round matchup against the Penguins before getting swept by the eventual Stanley Cup Champions. Losing in the first round in 2027 would technically be a step back, albeit an understandable one, as the rebuild marches on.
Flyers defied quiet offseason with actually pulling off a bold move
Briere and the Flyers flipped that narrative on its head on Friday afternoon, though. Hell, they flipped the entire NHL on its head by tendering a five-year, $90-million offer sheet to Anaheim Ducks restricted free agent and star center Leo Carlsson. The 21-year-old reportedly had a few other teams vying for his services, but Carlsson chose to sign with the Flyers, potentially joining Jamie Drysdale and Trevor Zegras to switch coasts and shades of orange.
The offer sheet will give Carlsson the highest average annual value (AAV) on a contract in league history; it’s just a matter of whether it’ll be the Flyers or the Ducks signing those paychecks.
We’ve covered plenty of angles already on Carlsson. He could be the Flyers’ dream top-line center, and the potential lineup with Carlsson in the fold would be the best we’ve had in Philadelphia in quite some time.
This wasn’t the first big swing by Briere this offseason, though. The Flyers were in on Zach Werenski, Darnell Nurse (for better or worse), Mavrik Bourque (depending on who you believe), and John Carlson. They all landed with other teams for various reasons, or changed their mind to stay in Ohio, for some reason.
There was also some hope that the Flyers could be in on top-line centers like Robert Thomas, who is reportedly off the market, and Dylan Larkin, whose trade list didn’t include the Flyers, at least as of now.
While the offer sheet to Carlsson may have been the Flyers’ Hail Mary this offseason, it instantly became Briere’s signature move as general manager, even if the Ducks choose to match.
It also showed that those rumors surrounding the Flyers in recent weeks (and months) were real. It wasn’t just a team coming out after the fact and saying they were interested, or timidly entering the conversation for a player that they knew they couldn’t land anyway.
That’s not how the Flyers do business. They’ve never done business that way. It’s backfired in the past, and the organization struggled with the salary cap in its early years, so there was some skepticism that Briere would be any different.
A brief glance at Briere’s predecessors shows why.
Briere did what no recent Flyers GM was able to do
Chuck Fletcher’s tenure is better off forgotten. He made some solid moves early on, but band-aids can only cover up so much. His attempt to salvage Ron Hextall’s failed rebuild — we’ll get to that in a second — worked well enough to make the playoffs and win a round in the bubble in 2020, but he doubled and tripled down on that in the months thereafter.
Fletcher failed to address any of the team’s needs ahead of the shortened 2020-21 season, leading into an offseason that ultimately sank his ship and dug an even deeper hole for the Flyers.
Briere was brought in to dig out of that hole, similar to what Hextall was tasked with a decade prior.
Hextall and Briere both preached patience upon taking over as general manager. The former goalie had a good enough core to build around, and some of his early draft picks have become key parts of the team, but he failed to make the right moves at the right times. Whether it was failing to listen to some of his scouts, making a big free-agent splash with James van Riemsdyk a bit too early, or refusing to switch gears on the fly, two first-round exits and a temporarily tarnished legacy in Philadelphia were all Hextall had to show for less than four years in the role.
While Briere and Keith Jones wanted to enter a New Era of Orange, some viewed it as simply a new coat of paint on an organization that hasn’t won a Stanley Cup in half a century. These were two former Flyers with minimal front office experience who were supposed to right the ship?
Every single move Briere has done led to this Leo Carlsson offer sheet
Despite a lack of managerial experience, Briere and Jones went right to work that offseason.
They sent Ivan Provorov off to Columbus in a three-way trade that netted a few draft picks and Sean Walker, who turned into another first-round pick at the deadline, among other pieces. Kevin Hayes wasn’t too far behind Provorov out the door in what was essentially a simple cap dump for the Flyers.
They even tried to trade Travis Sanheim, who had yet to reach his ceiling, and with hindsight being 20/20, thankfully, Torey Krug put the kibosh on that as the blueliner has become a key cog in the core, and his $6.25 million cap hit is no longer a heavy weight.
The 2023 NHL Draft fell in the Flyers’ favor a bit, thanks to Matvei Michkov making it known that he wouldn’t play for certain teams. The Russian phenom fell to the Flyers at seventh overall, and they added Oliver Bonk later in the round. They also bolstered the goaltending pipeline with Carson Bjarnason and Yegor Zavragin in the second and third rounds, and took Denver Barkey in the third round as well.
The Michkov selection was the first big statement that the new front office made. The trades were nice to see that there was some sort of plan to clear out cap space, but that first offseason wouldn’t have been the same without the Michkov pick.
Briere and Jones did all this while knowing that 2022 fifth-overall pick Cutter Gauthier wasn’t too happy with the organization. In fact, most of the league knew that Gauthier wasn’t going to play in Philadelphia.
While that could sink a new front office, Briere and Jones did well enough to keep that under wraps, swapping Gauthier for Jamie Drysdale and a second-round pick after the former Flyers prospect won gold at World Juniors. And that might be the only trade you can point to and argue that the Flyers definitively lost.
Briere was already building a bit of a reputation for himself, and he showed at the 2024 trade deadline that he’d be rigid on his prices while remaining flexible enough to work with a team to get there. He made it clear that the Flyers weren’t going to ship out Walker for anything less than a first-round pick, and he took back Ryan Johansen’s contract (while giving Colorado a fifth-rounder) to make it happen.
It was a hell of a job by Briere and Jones in their first year on the job, and it was just the beginning.
The 2024 offseason was a quieter one by Briere’s standards. There were no real key transactions, with the trade back at the draft to pick Jett Luchanko while Zeev Buium was on the board, dampening things.
The big news of that offseason was that Michkov would be able to come over to North America earlier than expected, signing his entry-level contract with the Flyers in July and making his NHL debut later that year.
But Briere once again showed a willingness to get his hands dirty during the season with a few savvy trades.
Prior to the trade deadline, the Flyers traded Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee — two holdovers from the Hextall years, and two guys who seemed to be liked in the locker room — to Calgary for a few draft picks and players. The return package wasn’t the point, though, as Frost was due a raise in the offseason, and Farabee was in the third year of a six-year, $30 million contract. Neither player was really reaching their potential, and they still haven’t with the Flames.
Then, at the deadline, Briere became the general manager to finally pull the trigger on a Scott Laughton trade. Once again, it was known that the Flyers wanted at least a first-round pick back for the veteran forward, despite him aging into more of a bottom-six forward rather than a middle-six option.
Laughton was dealt along with two later draft picks to the Maple Leafs for Nikita Grebenkin, who is already at least a fourth-liner in the NHL, and a first-round pick that could become one of the most valuable assets acquired by Briere. That first-round pick, of course, is the one that has been bandied about due to Toronto’s later trade with the Bruins. If all goes well for the Flyers, that could be a top-10 pick in next year’s draft, making it easier to part with their own first-round pick in an offer sheet.
Briere kept that momentum going into the offseason, making arguably his biggest splash yet. He was able to land Trevor Zegras, who had been in trade rumors for years at that point, for Ryan Poehling, a second-round pick, and a fourth-round pick.
It wasn’t quite as big a swing as the Carlsson offer sheet, but it once again showed that Briere meant business. Acquiring Zegras gave the Flyers a potential first-line center or top-six forward at worst.
Zegras raised the Flyers’ ceiling, and Briere raised the floor by signing Dan Vladar and Christian Dvorak in free agency. They were short-term overpays, at least for the center, but it gave the Flyers the stability they needed as they looked to turn the corner in the rebuild.
While the Flyers impressed on the ice, especially in the second half of the season and into the playoffs, Briere and Jones’ work was nearly exclusively behind the scenes. They kept the subtly savvy moves going, adding depth forward Carl Grundstrom for Ryan Ellis’ contract, which gave the Flyers a veteran option if needed while also helping out their salary cap situation.
The trade deadline didn’t see any big deals made by the Flyers, and they didn’t acquire a future first-round pick for the first time in Briere’s tenure, but they did get a former first-round pick.
Philadelphia’s glut of wingers allowed them to take a chance on David Jiricek for the small price of Bobby Brink, who, unfortunately, became a healthy scratch for the Wild.
Jiricek was drafted by the Blue Jackets with the sixth overall pick in 2022, one slot after the Flyers selected Gauthier. He was then shopped and ultimately traded to Minnesota in 2024 for a pick in each of the first five rounds in various years.
We’ll see how that ends up playing out for the Flyers, but once again, it was a worthy risk on a player with a high pedigree.
And that brings us to this offseason.
Flyers got better this summer before Carlsson, but this is something else
It would’ve been fine if the Flyers hadn’t ended up connecting on any of their big swings — and they still might not if the Ducks match the offer sheet. Woll and Acciari would once again raise the Flyers’ floor, and a full year of Porter Martone, Tyson Foerster (hopefully), and a motivated Matvei Michkov would theoretically raise the ceiling.
That’s not to mention the win-win contract extension for Foerster, whose upcoming $7.1 million cap hit could turn into a steal if he reaches his potential, while offering the forward some stability if he tops out as a middle-six winger.
But it’s all been leading up to this.
It got a lot harder for the Flyers to add a franchise-changing player in the 2026 offseason when all of the top names ended up signing contract extensions with their teams. That’s the way things are going nowadays, though, with the top names in unrestricted free agency usually being role players in the top half of the lineup at best.
So when the going got tough, the tough got going. Briere and Jones reportedly had been working on this Carlsson offer sheet for quite some time, and the Ducks center had options on the table to choose from.
The Ducks were expecting to sign Carlsson for around $12 million per season, and the Swedish center was willing to take as low as $9.5 million, if an interview conducted last summer is to be believed.
Pat Verbeek reportedly made it known that the Ducks would match any offer sheet that Carlsson signed, but a 50% increase on what they expected to sign him for could change his tune. That’s not a small 50%, either. It’s $6 million, or 5% of the $104 million salary cap. On top of that, the Flyers’ offer is heavily front-loaded with signing bonuses, which could be foul for the fowl.
Briere now has Verbeek between a rock and a hard place.
Verbeek can stick by his guns and match the offer sheet, which would leave the Ducks with minimal cap space. That’s a major issue as Anaheim still has a pair of restricted free agents in Gauthier (no, he cannot be offer sheeted) and defenseman Pavel Mintuyukov, who is now ripe for an offer sheet. That’s not to mention that the Ducks don’t have enough defensemen to fill out an NHL roster.
Or Verbeek can let Carlsson walk to Philadelphia and take the four first-round picks in compensation. Mind you, those will likely (hopefully) be selections in the latter half of the round as the Swedish centerman should make the Flyers an instant playoff team for years to come.
Ultimately, this is a huge win-win situation for Briere and the Flyers.
If the Ducks refuse to match, the Flyers would easily be pencilled into a playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division. Sure, maybe they wouldn’t be able to compete with the likes of the Florida Panthers or Carolina Hurricanes just yet, but this would open the team’s contention window earlier than expected, and keep it wide open for the foreseeable future. A core of Carlsson, Martone, and Michkov, along with the Flyers’ future cap space and up-and-coming prospects, is unspeakably exciting.
If the Ducks do match, Briere put the screws to Verbeek and further proved that he’s willing to go to great lengths to make the Flyers a contender and put them back on the map. It’d also be shocking if the Flyers didn’t have a backup plan if Anaheim does match the offer sheet. There may not be many players left on the open market, but player empowerment is taking over this offseason, and that can only work in the Flyers’ favor with Briere’s ballsy move and Comcast’s deep pockets.
Long gone are the days of apathy, empty seats, and Eagles chants ringing throughout the arena. Briere is building a true contender, and the fans know it, as shown by the standing ovation following a second-round exit. The league knows it now, too.
