The Philadelphia Flyers made their incredibly bold move. They went ahead and tendered an offer sheet for 21-year-old star center Leo Carlsson in an attempt to pry him away from the Anaheim Ducks just before he starts playing his best hockey. But the Flyers weren’t the only team to be into this idea and try to get Carlsson to sign a contract for their team.
We’ll find out by next Friday if the Carlsson offer sheet will be matched by the Ducks or not, but until then all we’re going to be doing is learning little tidbits of information about this process. Such as how front-loaded the five-year, $90-million contract the Flyers had Carlsson sign, truly is — given that he will be earning $39 million in the next 12 months through a series of massive signing bonuses. And, how Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek had a chance to lock up Carlsson to something around $10 million last season and expected for him to stay around the $10-12 million range this summer.
Just a bunch of fun information that keeps expanding the entire picture of how this came together. How Carlsson was willing to play ball and sign an extension last summer, but Verbeek’s standard of not giving a young star what he wants or earlier than his restricted free agent status, has completely come back to bite him in the rear end. So much of this was avoidable for Anaheim so now it’s a little bit of justice for screwing around. And other teams clearly saw this as a unique opportunity to get a first-line center to sign an offer sheet that could change the hockey landscape.
According to TSN’s Darren Dreger, there were as many as four other teams who presented Carlsson and his agent with an offer sheet, and even more who had at least discussed it internally as something that they can do.
That’s a whole lot for what was previously seen as a taboo way of how to add a good player. Teams didn’t want to tick off the other one, or was worried about a future offer sheet in retaliation of doing this. So, they just didn’t go down the offer sheet path whatsoever.
But it was the Flyers that made this happen and actually got the player to put pen to paper. Because after all, this isn’t just some sort of sneak attack to steal away a player without their consent. The Flyers had to convince Carlsson to sign that five-year contract to make this happen and that should show how players do actually want to play in Philadelphia.
Flyers have turned into a destination, one way or another
There has been an ongoing narrative surrounding the Flyers that they haven’t been a “destination” team. With fans worried after John Carlson decided to pursue a Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning instead of being the Flyers’ power-play hero, or Zach Werenski not being extremely adamant that he gets traded to the Flyers; there was a general feeling that maybe the Flyers can’t really convince a high-profile free agent to sign in Philadelphia, or that there is just this negative notion about big-time players seeing the Flyers as an option.
Well, that idea is certainly done and over with.
Leo Carlsson chose the Flyers over other opportunities. We won’t know what other teams sent out offer sheets to Carlsson’s agent, but we do know that a total of 28 teams have four of their next five picks to meet the criteria to sent an offer sheet above the $11.9-million AAV mark. And, that 10 teams in the NHL have over $14 million in projected cap space right now. So, Carlsson certainly could have had options.
The most obvious thing in the world though is the other teams could have possibly not even come close to the five-year, $90-million offer that Briere put across his desk. A team could have certainly sent something like a 6-year, $78-million contract that, again, doesn’t come close to the shorter and bigger contract that he was able to sign with the Flyers. So, it could’ve been a no-brainer to go with the team that was actually just offering the most money, but that also means a whole lot.
Now, even if the Flyers were the highest bidders and Carlsson didn’t really think about anything more than that and how many great young players the 21-year-old Swede can grow and potentially win with, that’s a solid bump in perception.
It shows that the Flyers don’t play around. If players and agents of future high-end unrestricted free agents or just high-end players in general, now know that Danny Briere and the Flyers are willing to make a player the highest paid player in the entire NHL, then they truly mean business. Players with no movement clauses might think more about Philadelphia if they believe they can get paid on their next deal there. In that hypothetical situation an elite player is entering the final year of his contract and his team is selling him off, maybe he really opens up to the Flyers more than before because of this bold move.
That might be really stretching the positives out of this earth-shattering offer sheet, but it’s certainly not impossible. The Flyers weren’t even close to being one of the signature teams of the NHL for the last decade; more just that team that goes to the beat of their own drum and is very slowly rebuilding. But now, they’re the bold and aggressive and exciting team that can do the things that only fans sometimes hypothesize about.
Again, it might have just been the most money and that’s why Carlsson signed this historic offer sheet to join the Flyers — or he likes what is going on in Philadelphia so much more than other teams with lots of cap space and a need for a No. 1 center. But, either way it is a big step forward in the perception about this team in the NHL landscape.
