The Hockey PDOcast - The Leo Carlsson Offer Sheet

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Steve Werier to discuss the Leo Carlsson offer sheet, how the Flyers structured the contract he agreed to, and the decisions the Ducks need to make in the aftermath of it. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name's Demetri Philipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Steve, Steve, what's going on in? You're like we were just on. What's up, Dimitri?

Yeah, I wasn't expecting to have you on. So soon, you know, a peek behind the curtain. I did my last show on Thursday afternoon. We covered John Carlson, go to the lightning, the Blake Holman trade to Minnesota, some additional free agency nuggets and kind of tidying up after day two of the free agent period. And I figured, I mean, I am hockey media after all.

So I figured it was a good time for me to get out of town a little bit, go to the cabin. Things were dying down. And then while I'm out in the wilderness, of course, the flyers drop this news that they've signed Leo Carlson to an offer sheet. We couldn't record the show till now. But I'm happy I was able to land you, get you on, because I want to really get into all the fine print and the nerdy details surrounding. the logistics of the contract, some of the fine print, the dynamics of offer sheets, get into all that stuff and really blow that conversation out. And if we have time at the end, I do want to quickly talk a little bit about Jason Robertson and the arbitration process

and all of that as well. But let's start with Leo Carlson and the offer sheet. So kind of running through the bullet points, 18 by 5, of course, as everyone knows, 90 million total value, covers his age 22 to 26 seasons, 85.3 or million of the 9%. is accounted for by signing bonuses, presumably paid out in lump sum payments annually. And the interesting part to me, of course, is that once the new CBA kicks in on September 16th, this particular set of structuring will no longer be permitted. It'll be capped at 60% of the total value of the contract, which I believe would put it at 54 million compared to the 85.

He's getting here, a lot of it's paid up front as well over the first year or two. I know you have a lot of thoughts on this. you've been tweeted about some of it. Let's get into all the most interesting considerations here, break it down for both teams perspective, but I think specifically the Ducks decision over the next week or so here in terms of whether to match or not. Sure.

Yeah, that's a great lead in. You know, I think my shortest answer is I think Anaheim does match. And there's a bunch of reasons why. Like, I'm going to say from Leo's angle, and I'll tell you what I think the Ducks are going to do. Like from Leo's angle, this is obviously very exciting. right? Your agent and a team come to you and offer you this contract that sounds like it's in, you know, significant excess of what Anaheim was willing to pay. It's front-loaded and the most player-friendly bio-proof get-rich-quick sort of way. And you can imagine how exciting that is and it's generational life-changing wealth. And of course, the difficult question for a client to ask is, is an agent or advisors in any legal or hockey context like this one presented with a contract is, this sounds amazing. What is the worst thing that can happen? And let's flip that around now, which from Anaheim standpoint, their question when looking at this offer sheet is, what is the best outcome for us?

And I don't think, I know a lot of people think it's a foregone conclusion, take the picks. I don't think they're going to do that. And I don't think they're going to be excited about doing that at least. You know, if we just sort of be concerned and say, okay, Philly was around a, you know, mid-range team this year. They're adding Leo Carlson. They're getting a full year of Porter-Martone, another year in Rick-Tockage system. You know, maybe they'll be middle of the pack at worst-ish for the next four years. You're talking to picking like 15 to 18 range each for the next four drafts.

You know, a 14, 15, 16, and 17-year-old as of right now, that's not like saying, right? You call up a team right now and say, well, you know, we'll give you four first-round picks for Connor Bedard or Maclean Sal Brinney or anyone, and the team's going to turn it down outright. Obviously, it's different now. Now there's an offer sheet there. But let's get to Anaheim. I think what Anaheim is going to do when they look through this really closely, and when Henry Samueli looks through this closely with all his advisors,

which include but probably aren't just limited to the guys who advise them on the hockey team day to day, he's going to say, where is the pressure point in this offer sheet? And I think the pressure point in this offer sheet that is going to allow him to match and get the best of both worlds as they now stand is on about July 2nd of 2027, and here's why. As you said, the office is front-loaded in a way that can't be done once the new CBA kicks in. But the way it's done is very fairly to send a message to Samueli and the ducks of, we are financially bullying you in a way that should deter you for matching. And that's why there is not only 18 million upfront on the day it goes into effect or thereabouts,

but there's another massive 18 million or so signing bonus that sounds like it's due around July 1st or 2nd of 2027. I'm zeroing in on that window because I think what the ducks are going to do is they're going to say, let's match this thing. Let's keep the player for at least one year. He's a great player. Let's put him in the room. Let's set business aside and figure out the hockey. At the end of a year, maybe we keep it.

Maybe it works out. Maybe he scores 60 goals and we have an amazing year. And we just say, bygones be bygones. But maybe we still have some lingering feelings or whatever. We've decided we want to focus on other players with the cap dollars. When the calendar turns to July 2nd, 2027, Carlson's a $1 million cash out late for that season.

And over the rest of his deal, it's four years at what we'll work out to about like $12 million cash. And that's not bad. And you can cut down the $18 million cap at that point by retaining a couple million bucks or so. And so I think they're going to say, we're going to match, we're going to keep them for a year. At the beginning of the second year,

all the leverage turns are away. He has no trade protection. He has a $1 million-based salary. There are going to be a lot of suitors out there. You know, does it get them the final year of a McDavid or Matthews, maybe, maybe not, but there's a lot of teams out there that can't attract a player like Leo Carlson in an environment where there's so many no trade clauses thrown around and no moves

that will be salivating at him. And that's where I think Philly maybe slipped up a little bit where if it's made that offer sheet and that second year signing bonus due, let's say after the 2027 trade deadline in March, that would really deter another club from going after him because it would add so much cash. I'm not sure if that amount of money will scare Henry Sanueli. He might just pay it and use that as his card to say,

all right, now you're mine and you go wherever I want you to go. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot to unpack there. I think the details and the structure in the contract are done well enough from the Flyers perspective and Carlson's agent that it certainly warrants further deliberation. You know, just because of some of the issues it could cause down the road and we're going to get into more of them here in a second. But ultimately, I think, and I've thought about this for a couple days now,

had a chance to really mull it over. I think it's a pretty easy match, in my opinion, nonetheless. And for some of the reasons you mentioned, I think from an organizational perspective, if you're the Ducks, you're coming out of this prolonged rebuild where you miss the playoffs for seven straight seasons and built up all this goodwill with the year you had last year playing fun, exciting hockey, scoring a bunch of goals, beating the Oilers in round one, pushing the Golden Knights in the second round.

And the idea of removing Leo Carlson from this roster necessitates, such a massive step back, in my opinion. Like, your centers on the depth chart after this are 35-year-old Michael Granland, Ryan Paling, Tim Washy, and the only way you're going to get a player of Leo Carlson's caliber again, accounting for the age and the skill set particularly, is by doing exactly what you did in the first place to get them, which is being really bad for a long time and picking in the top three. And I don't think there's any interest in doing that.

The four first-round picks sound intriguing on the surface. But if you take a step back and kind of reflect on what that's actually likely to be worth, I think you and I spoke about this last time in terms of this paradigm shift in the market, right, with the cap going up, everyone has resources now, and there being a supply and demand and balance, particularly in a free agency. If you're looking to meaningfully improve your team, we've seen teams have to go to trade route quite a bit so far this off season. And as a result of it, just because of how few kind of prime age players are available

and teams are willing to part with, we've seen some pretty inflated prices, right? Like just a couple of weeks ago at the draft, we saw Paoledorovia go for two first and a third, and that was just for the right to pay him 11 by 7. Mason McTavish was a contract. The Ducks were very openly and actively trying to get rid of, and they got two first round picks for it from the Blues.

And we've seen such a shift there that, like, I do ultimately think that as soon as Carlson's under contract and on your cap sheet, moving forward, he's just more valuable outright than those picks. And I think like the idea of four first round picks sounds great, but then when you actually break it down in terms of what you'd be able to reasonably use it on to replace him and come out either even or try to improve, like the pathways towards that become pretty limited pretty quickly.

And I just don't really see a viable path that makes a lot of sense for the ducks if they went that route. Yeah, I think that's right. And listen, Leo Carlson is far better and younger and everything than all those. players you mentioned who fetched a large return, which just goes back to that point of, you know, you keep the player, you match. You've got some cap maneuvering probably you have to do, but, you know, Seneca's another year away from being extension eligible.

Gochie is 102C. He can't fetch an offer sheet. You know, you mentioned McCall Granland, but you've got Granlin, Killorn, Kreider. I think the fourth one is Terry, but they've got four veteran forwards, all under contract for fewer than two more seasons, all with. no more than, you know, a 15 team no trade. So there's maneuverability there.

A couple of those names are eminently tradable if you had to go that route to clear up more cap space. And they're obviously not super concerned, assuming they match with how much they just paid to keep Mintyakov. So I think that's right. I think if you're Anaheim and you have to think at the ownership level, at least they're sitting there saying we don't want Philly to win this thing. We don't want the stigma of being too cheap and losing, you know, a franchise center who was going to be our cornerstone going forward.

sort of with a gunpointed at our head, you keep them. And it's a team, but it's manageable in the right way. You know, teams have spent lots of cap space on far inferior players where if you add them up, they're in bad spots, far worse than this would be. And that's why I think, you know, at minimum, you keep them for a year.

He gives you a chance to win. And then, like you said, you trade them for the exact return you need to keep winning now, which isn't a 2031 first lottery ticket from Philly. It's maybe a really good young player. can get on your roster tomorrow. They just get way more out. It looks better.

The optics are better. And it puts them in a good spot. This was, you know, it was a good, exciting team this year, and they might be able to make noise next year,

too. I also think if you're viewing players purely as, like, stocks and you're betting on who's going to either hold value or increase value over time, I think Carlson is such a good bet to significantly increase value,

especially for some of the logistics you mentioned, right, where like, let's say things, go south for whatever reason. You have a bad year the season. The relationship internally, you can't kind of gloss over it, and you wind up deciding you have to move on at some point down the road.

I use the summer of 2028 as an example. You use the one even earlier than that, but let's say two years from now, Carlson at that point, will still be a 23-year-old number one center. He'll be owed, I think at that point, like 33 million in actual salary over the final three years. He's under contract for it. He has no trade protection still at that.

that point, the cap's going to be $123 million and there's going to be at least like half the league not actually wanting to spend $123 million to get up to the cap and be competitive. And so the idea of what he'd be worth at that point, I think greatly exceeds this proposition of these four first round picks. I've got more notes on the ducks, but I do want to kind of close the loop on the player perspective here for Carlson. And you mentioned some of the stuff earlier that I find interesting. you know, we should also loop in in terms of the perks that him and his agents got here in this

structuring of this deal. It also includes and, you know, the no move clause in the final year of the deal, which buys the one UFA season in 2030, 31, kind of limiting future flexibility. I think planting even more seeded out for matching from the Ducks perspective. I honestly, when I kind of went through all of it, and I'm sure this appeal to you as well with all the contract work you've done previously struck me as one hell of a contract that Carlson's representatives designed along with Danny Breyer. In particular, because, you know, from a player perspective, I think just going out and maximizing earning power and perks, they sort of satisfied all of those boxes here, in my opinion, right?

Like, I know you kind of mentioned some of the structuring that might have made it more difficult or at least planted more of a question in a Ducks perspective, but just purely from Carlson's perspective here, I feel like they almost got. everything they wanted and that's the way I view it more so than any sort of indictment against the ducks or anything that you know suggesting that he wants to go play in philadelphia i feel like he just ultimately got what he wanted on the open market and now it's incumbent on the ducks to either match it and satisfy those needs or let him go elsewhere yeah i mean without visibility into the relationship between the player and the ducks i know there's conjecture about like how

patverbeek and just solomon negotiate and how it might might be you know rubbing agents this wear that way. It's absolutely, I mean, it's, I imagine, you know, Matt Keaters, his son's phones are blowing up with text messages with, you know, balloons and champagne and dollar signs from fellow agents and probably players as well. It's a great win for anyone who wants to see, you know, great young players get paid what they're worth earlier. It'll have a seismic effect probably on other players as well, you know, to the extent the player wanted to, you know, maximizes his earning potential on all that and was okay with the destination, which he surely is. It's a win for Leo as well, and presumably he's well prized of the potential of going back to Anaheim under the auspices of, you know, the offer sheet being matched.

It looks, you know, very good on all counts. I do find it interesting because you brought up, you know, the agent angle of how this change or how it complicates things going forward because it just makes the job of an agent more complicated with more variables and you can certainly envision a situation where like, you know, multiple players who have the same agent are in similar spots on one team and like

Carlson, you know, as has been said, like if they match Anaheim, this will blow up their cap sheet to some extent and it will have a massive effect on other players on that team potentially how much they can earn, how fast they can earn it and whether they can earn it in Anaheim and certainly you can imagine it being tricky if, you know, one agent

had multiple players in that spot. And it just, yeah, it makes everyone's job more interesting and more tricky. And it probably makes following the league as a whole more exciting, which is good. Well, the reason why I bring it up that way is, you know, we spent a lot of time in the past, like lamenting or wondering out loud why we don't see more offer sheet signed. And I think part of it was certainly GM's kind of fearing retribution or reprisal and not wanting to get involved in that with other teams. I do think a lot of it that went unspoken or not brought up nearly a

enough was it typically takes the player actually agreeing to sign and being incentivized to do so. And in this case, I honestly feel like it would have been irresponsible for Carlson not to do so based on everything he got in this. And, you know, typically, and you've seen it even after this, right, like a player signs an offer sheet, it gets framed as either he wants to leave his current team or he wants to go to the team he just signed with. And I'm not sure it's that deep. I'm sure. And we're going to talk more about Rebeek's history. of negotiating with RFA's played a role in here as well. But it kind of reminds me of when Sebastian Ajo signed his offer sheet with the HABs in what 2019. And it was followed up in a couple

days after with all this chest thumping from Mark Bergevin with these quotes about how like Sebastian Owl wants to play for the HABs. That's why he signed this. And in reality, it was very clearly he wanted to speed up the process and take control of the leverage in his RFA negotiations to get a bunch of that signing bonus money up front and get paid what he thought he was worth. And was on a smaller scale than this across the board, but the structuring was very similar in terms of what percentage of it was paid out in signing bonuses and the money he got at that time, similarly a five-year deal that took him to UFA at 26. And then, of course, he signs the eight-year extension when he's eligible with the hurricanes

and wins the cup this past year and it all wound up working out for them. But I think like RFAs have gotten such a raw deal historically when negotiating with their teams because of that lack of optionality, right? And teams have sort of lured that over them. and use it to take control of the negotiations. And in this case, with the team clearly dragging its feet, and it sounds like they were offering in the 12 to 12 and a half range, he wanted 15, he wound up getting beyond that,

I feel like it almost is as simple as that in some way. Yeah, I think that's probably right. Like, I don't think it's totally a coincidence that you have a player on Anaheim being targeted with the backdrop that you mentioned, with the perception of how that front office negotiates. I don't think it's, you know, totally a coincidence that you had sort of the Zach Werenski news pop up and then dissipate, but that's a front office as well. That sort of has, you know, some whispers in terms of how much is being spent on the player

experience and all that. And then even, you know, the jersey offer sheet as well for Barrett Hayden, which is objectively a good one for a number of reasons. But even that one, like there's all, you know, in all three, there's a little bit of spite, right? None of them are like purely sterile. Here's the player we want on a team. It doesn't matter what team it is. Let's go

do it. And even the AHA one, like there's always these other atmospherics around. I think the Ajo one, I forget the specifics, but it was at a time. I don't know if it was after Suban and Weber trade, but I think it was at a time where like Mark Bergevin was under Sun Hidon. It was a bit of a like hey, look at me, you know, play

strong man here type of an offer sheet. So there's always those atmospherics coming in, which doesn't mean they're wrong strategically. Like, the Barrett-Haden one is very good strategically. You know, the Carlson one as well. But we're still getting these fun storylines where, you know, manufacturer or not, there's like that back story in context. It's not just, you know, Seattle goes and offersheets someone on Ottawa

and there's nothing to sensationalize about it. But I think we're getting there. I think we're getting closer to that, not just because, you know, we always say it's a copy-out league. So more offer sheets, we get more offer sheets. But I think, you know, as we get more. young, ambitious managers, like we're seeing in a lot of places. And like we see in Carolina, which just, you know, succeeded in winning a cup,

you know, you'll see probably a wider range of just your play strategic offer sheets as opposed to ones that, you know, have some bad blood tied to them. Well, teams are obviously freaked out by this new reality, because I think they got to previously coast under the, you know, comfortable assumption that they'd be able to just retain their young players at very cost-efficient prices. I think for me from the outside, I'm not sure if you feel this. way as well. Like from a meritocracy perspective, I'm not sure it's a bad thing for the league's

health. Like it feels like a logical outcome, right? Where you're paying a premium for the most productive seasons. And that definitely beats the alternative of the way business was done previously under the previous system where players would just be wildly underpaid for these, say, 22 to 27 or 28 year old seasons during their peak. They'd finally get out from under that team control and then immediately go somewhere else and sign a regrettable deal. to the 30s that they wouldn't be able to live up to and be overpaid because the team was picking up the tab on what they used to be previously. And now we're actually kind of more in line with players getting paid what they actually deserve. Now, this is obviously an inflated one,

I think by design to at least create the chance that the ducks won't sign here because of the way they structured it and making him the highest paid player. But I think like the concept of it itself is a pretty logical one. Yeah, it's a very simple one. And it's in other leagues as well. And again, it's more ripping off the band-aid and the stigma. And, you know, teams not worrying about sort of angering their competition, but also, like, their friends and potentially their sources of jobs down the line if they move on and all that stuff. It should become more commonplace, you know, just the influx of data and intelligence until the league, like you said, is, you know, everyone's aware the smartest bets are on the great young players and the riskiest bets are on the, you know, guys on the back nine of their careers.

And we see that on July 1 as well, where even though the dollar values are, you know, higher than ever before, but largely as a function of the cap going, you know, so high up so quickly, you know, you don't see as much wildly irrational deals being thrown out. And, you know, it's just a product of a system where, like, you know, all these collective agreements in sports now, otherwise are often set up to the benefit of long, tenured veteran workers or players. and you sort of see that in the NHL, CBA, too, right? Where if you're a veteran player, you can sign a, you know, one-year deal, bonus-lating contract that has a bunch of cap benefits with the team that let the deal spill over to another cap here if they're tied against the cap, stuff like that, that allow veterans to earn maybe a little more than the otherwise would.

And the inverse of that is younger players earned for a long time, less than they might be worth, and that's what's changing now. A couple more thoughts on the ducks. You know, we talked a lot about this a little bit. I want to hammer it a bit more. Pat Rebeek and his role in all this, you know, kind of mentioned teams dragging out this process and making the RFA negotiation side of things difficult for young players. He is certainly a world-class perpetrator of this very thing. As people have pointed out, he did it with

Zegras, Dreisdale, and McTavish to certain extent. Over the past couple years, all three of them coming off, ELCs wound up having painful negotiations on their second deals that bled late into the fall. Zegress winds up signing a three-year deal, Drysdale 2, or sorry, a three-year deal as well, and then McTavish signs the 7 by 6, they wind up moving at the draft. And each of them, I think,

also was heard by the fact that, you know, not only what a confidence killer must have been, but just missing that important time in the lead-up to the season. I don't think it's an accident that all three of them essentially wound up having really tough years coming out of that. And I do question, you know,

in the process of all this, like what the point of that was, considering where the ducks were at at that time, considering they were a rebuilding team that had a ton of cap space and didn't necessarily need to be operating, like a Stanley Cup contender that's, you know, counting pennies and trying to make every single dollar under the cap work. And instead they were just nickel and diming these young players.

They presumably had high hopes for. And then the ramifications it had on all of it, right? And so especially in light of Rubek earlier this week, you know, coming out and saying, like, don't even bother doing this because I'm going to match it. And the Flyers calling his bluff. It gave off big time, you know, that meme of like the guy saying, what are you going to do, stab me? And it's a quote from a man who got stabbed.

It wound up working out that way. In this instance, do you have any thoughts on sort of the lead up to this from a Ducks perspective in terms of how they mismanage some of those situations and how they might be a culprit in the way, you know, a team like the Flyers. And it sounds like four or five other teams identified them as a team they could potentially exploit here or go after via the offer sheet route? Yeah, so I haven't negotiated with Pat directly, but I've negotiated with most of the big agents and most of the existing GMs during my time as AGM.

And, you know, there's wildly varying negotiating philosophies. And you see the same thing, you know, my life is a corporate lawyer, but let's stick to hockey. You know, there are some negotiators and some GMs who will invariably start a negotiation for a player that you know will end up signing for $5 million and they'll start at two. and they'll expect you to start at eight and they'll drag it on for months and you'll end up where you knew you were going to end up all along maybe on the first day of the season. I never believe that was the way

negotiated with agents. Even for top players, even with, you know, for the time, what were, you know, high stakes contracts for guys like Barkov, Huberdo, Act Vlad and the like was, you know, I'd always say to the agents, listen, here's around where we know we're going to land. Here's where we think the players were worth.

Like, you know, I'll candidly admit you know, if you went to market, there are some other teams that might pay you a little more. There's some of them might pay you a little less. Here's what we're planning to do with our team. And so, like, here's the range in the suite of structures and offers that are going to make sense. And I can promise you no longer, no matter how long this plays out, like, we're not going to go, you know, far different than this range. Right. And most of the times, the agents are very, you know, respectful of that.

And they'll come back in the same way. And, you know, I had negotiation with Todd Diamond, who represented Sasha Barkoff at the time. And he said the same thing. He said, you know, Sasha could maybe, if we drag this out, do this or do that. But here's the number that makes sense for him, makes sense for his family, gets him where he wants to be. Let's tweak these things a little way. And, you know, you get to yes. There are certainly NHL GMs and Rebeek may not be one of them that really adopt the hard line stance.

Every dollar matters, I'm going to use every second like that old line, you know, when you have time to use it, which I don't buy, but some do. And it's grading. And the issue with that, you know, as good. of a negotiator you may, you might be or might not be, and as big of an ego as you might have, and this goes for anything, but it also includes negotiating, you know, hockey player contracts, you have to always know where the leverage is. And it's really hard sometimes when you're really confident and you've had a lot of successes and you pride yourself on having a certain reputation to realize, you know what,

I don't have the leverage here. And there are some risks here. And I am going to need to bite the bullet, so to speak, and maybe not take the absolute best deal I think I might be able to get if everything goes my way, but I am spotting some real risk. And that leverage exists no matter how hard I yell and scream and fight and claw. And so let's get that risk off the table. And I think that's what happened here. You know, certainly like you said, that that's the front office that has earned the reputation of negotiating in a certain way. And that gets out, you know, agents talk, teams talk, everyone talks

in hockey. And that reputation, you know, probably leads to, you know, people talking and think, hey, we need to sort of push back this tide, which I think this negotiation probably will do. I think the only gap here is I don't think how Verbeek and Solomon negotiate is necessarily a perfect reflection on what Henry Samueli will ultimately do at the end of the day. I think he probably delegates that authority to talk you guys, but for something this big and this business critical, like a $90 million offer sheet for your star player,

like that's where the owner may come in and say, here's where the right thing to do is, you know, he might, he might come over the top and we might not get the result we expected, which is, you know, they don't open the pocketbooks to match. I think they might go in a different direction there. Yeah. Well, to your point earlier, what? It's like 19 something in terms of signing bonus paid out once the contract's finalized and then another 18 the following summer and ultimately in the grand scheme of things, these dollar figures and signing bonuses are the equivalent of pocket change to someone like the ducks owners. But I do think these conversations though, like in terms of the fallout of it are interesting to me in terms of like what happens internally in terms of like questioning, okay, how do we get to this position and reflecting on a strategy perspective of like why do we allow this to happen? One of the not happening to anyone else. Why am I suddenly having to foot this bill after I haven't signed a single signing bonus in any contract we signed previously? Like I think that part is interesting to me. Yeah. No, I think that's very interesting. And, you know, it's sort of like the parable of, you know, the cow on the farm every day where, you know, other cows are going to the slaughterhouse every day. But that cow keeps eating and eating. And this time goes on, it's like,

I'm the lucky cow. Every other cow is being sent away until, you know, it's your day. And that So what happened to Anaheim. They pushed back for a long time and, you know, everyone else was handing out bonuses and they pushed back and pushed back and maybe thought they were in a safe space. And now they got hit with a sort of a tsunami of an offer sheet that's going to change how things work for them going forward for a long time. I do want to get into the trickle-down effect you mentioned on the cap structuring, right? Because I think we've seen organizations in the past sort of set this high watermark with

either their longest tenured player or their captain or who they view is their best player. and then everyone kind of falls in line under that, right? And obviously now when you distort it to a point where your best player in Leo Carlson's potentially making 18 million, that's a pretty massive gap that you have to account for. I did want to note that I've seen a lot of kind of, you know, mass panic about sharing their puckpedia page and being like, oh, they match this. The Ducks only have under 10 million in cap space to figure out the rest of their roster and sign Cutter Gocee long term.

And I think that's not necessarily right. either. There's many different ways they can accommodate all of these things if they so choose to in a creative manner, right? Like I think first off, they're very fortunate to Cutter-Goce is not himself offer sheet eligible. He's certainly going to get paid regardless based on what he showed us last year and how difficult it is to find goal scorers of his caliber. But, you know, there's a couple routes they can go. Like, I was looking at it and just off the top right now that figure that people are citing includes Theron Prasois's content. contract as their third goalie. It includes a 14th forward, very variable contracts.

I presume they're going to try to dump one of the guys you mentioned earlier, which is Criter, who has 6.5 times one, Kalloran 6.25 times one, or Frank Vitrono, who has the extra year on his deal. And it will be interesting to see this sort of concept of teams, either sensing that the ducks are vulnerable or weakened and whether anyone's going to want to help them out, I think we've seen with the way teams have operated the past two off seasons that there probably will be someone who's willing to take on one of those deals. I think a team in Detroit specifically that they've had dealings with would probably be interested in one of those first two guys I mentioned. And there's that. There's Troy Terry's probably going to be on LTIR the first couple months of

the season, which gives you another, I think, four million in cap relief under the new CBA. There's 10% offseason overage. So you could really kind of punt his decision for a couple months to figure it out. There's all sorts of things you could do to, I think, match this pretty comfortably if you're the ducks and then sign Cutter Gocee long term as well and I wanted to point that out because I've seen like it framed as basically being one or the other and if you bring back Carlson it's going to completely

just destroy the team you had last season and I'm not really sure that's necessarily the case. Yeah I think you answered your own question really well and I'll just add like according to reports the final meeting Anaheim it sounds like was what in the 13 million a year range and you know

I think the push back from Carlson's camp was at 15 but let's just even go with the 13 number, it landed at 18. You know, if you're managing a team and that $5 million delta, like, cripples your future forever. There's other problems there, right? I think they can manage around that unexpected increase in a way that doesn't put them in a bad spot, not as good a spot as they were hoping to be in.

You couple it with Pink Mintia Tocco, probably a little more than they thought, but they can work around it. Like we always say, you're, you know, your cap sheet on whatever website or, you know, elsewhere isn't indicative of cap problems just because you're near the number. You have problems if you have bad contracts for bad players for bad term and the names you just threw out that I mentioned earlier. They're good respected veterans, pretty good contracts, especially with the rising cap, term falling away, lots of options ish with not a full no trade.

And yeah, there will be at least if the past is good prologue, you know, there will be buyers for players like that, either teams who think they help them win now or teams that might, you take a picker or two to be paid off, so to speak, and maybe flip them at the deadline or whatever. So I don't think this is the end of the world for Anaheim. I think if they let Carlson walk, that might be transformative to their future because I don't know when the next little Carlson walks through that door,

like you said. But they can work around it. And Jeff Solomon is a long 10-year-to-experienced H-GM. So they have capable folks around who will make sure they use the right levers, like the ones you mentioned, to get them through some short-term pain. maybe. Well, and they have two more years, I believe, until Seneca's up for a second deal as well.

And at that point, the cap's going to be $123 million. All these guys are going to have expired. And I think they're going to be able to fit all that in. So I don't think matching Carlson from a Ducks perspective really impacts their ability to retain the core of their team moving forward. I think it'll probably impact their ability to potentially add more around them now based on the way they've added in previous off seasons. and some of the options available, I'm not sure that's a death knelt necessarily for them. Like honestly, their path forward in terms of continuing to improve and level up was probably incumbent on all of these guys.

We've just mentioned organically improving themselves as they enter their prime. And so that's still within reach for them. I guess we're going to have to have a conversation about the way they spend, you know, efficiently and diligently with older players and some of the missteps they've had along the way there and ultimately, I think just most importantly,

managing relationships with their young players better is probably the most important thing. But do you have any other thoughts on the ducks here before we close up with the Flyers perspective? You mentioned the Minchikov deal. I thought that one was interesting as well, especially with the reporting that's come out since from Elliot Friedman, that I think they were sort of presuming

that it would fall in that three-ish million range the way Olin Zellweger did, who they moved out to Buffalo for a second in a prospect. and kept Minchikov instead. And then there was a threat of the offer sheet, especially in light of what happened with the O'Carsen, it feels like they kind of panicked and just signed him to 7.25 times five.

And Dan Milstein finessed them a little bit. Do you have any thoughts on kind of that and sort of that element of the trickle down in terms of how that's going to inform future decisions for them? You know, I wonder, like, if none of this Carlson Bruhaha existed and there was just a Mintikov threat of offer sheet. you know, would they have bid and would they have signed him for that number? I'm skeptical.

I think there's a little bit of a fog of war of, you know, how many battlefronts do you want going on at one time? And they sort of, you know, decided to put a bow on this one. Don't want to use for, he's caved in, but, you know, probably signed him for more than it was expected. And, you know, setting aside whether or not he ends up being worth it in the future, he might be. We've seen loss of offensive defensemen sort of blossom in ways that weren't maybe expected at the time,

like Brandon Montourism and whatever. I think, you know, setting that aside at this moment, is it probably a little above market value? Yeah, it is, but it might just be the cost of doing business and calming the waters, given what's going on, or it may simply just be directed from above of we're not, you know, without having decided yet what they're doing with Leo, we're not going to be put in a spot where we lose two guys in the same summer like this, which you can imagine someone's saying. All right, from the Flyers perspective, do you agree that this is just such a W for Danny Breyer and co, regardless of the outcome, I think just due to like the optics and the court of

public opinion, especially, and they've done a good job of kind of building this up based on what they inherited previously, but I think some of the pushback was a lot of the moves were kind of like stuff on the margins, acquiring useful players, but not necessarily game changers, having this obvious need as a building block down the middle, having been able to address it via the draft, and then they go out and make a home run cut like this, regardless of whether they actually wind up getting Leo Carlson or not, it feels like it's built up a lot of cachet within the fan base, and I think around the league in general. Yeah, I think it's on brand for them.

I think, you know, another small win is the fact that both Zeris and Jamie Drysdale filed for Arb, which removes the offer sheet threat for the two of them, which helps Brearke keep his side of the street clean. Well, that presumes that either of them would have accepted an offer from Pat Rubik, which I don't think was up for consideration at this point. Or someone else. But yeah, yeah, they're in a good spot. Like, I know there's some chatter like, okay, the spotlight's going to be on Philly now,

and maybe someone will come after, you know, poor more children or their next great young player. But I think that would have happened maybe anyways in an environment where these become more prevalent. So, yeah, I think you shoot your shot. The worst case outcome is you're in the same position you would have been in, but for firing away that offer sheet,

except that now you have, you know, a bit of a bigger enemy in one camp, but that is what it is and teams should really just be acting strategically anyway. So, yeah, I like it for them. I think it, you know, fits nicely into the, broad street bullies or whatever ever ethos they're trying to build back there building back the team and then on the cusp or sorry on the heels of their first really good season in a while it was the right move it was the right shot the downside is minimal and like we

talked about the upside with adding a guy like carlson to a team like that is is massive and those opportunities come extremely rarely yeah listen it was undoubtedly an overpayment for leo carlson making them the highest paid player in the league just because the likelihood of him actually being worth 18 million on an annual salary is hard to achieve, even if I'm incredibly high and I'm moving forward. But if you are going to overpay on a player, I like it a lot more. And it's easier to stomach doing so with this type of player, right? Like as opposed to the death by a thousand cuts overpayments we typically see teams do much

more comfortably where it's like, yeah, I'm going to give away two, two and a half million of value here to a third liner or third pair of defenseman because it helps round out our team when in this case, yeah, you're probably overpaying by a couple million per season at the very least. But at the same time, you're adding a player that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get. And ultimately, that's the point of these offer sheets to make it uncomfortable for both sides, where it actually makes it somewhat likely the team's going to walk away and take the picks instead. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time. Yeah, listen, I've seen that discourse of like, oh, his value is 11 or 12 or 13.

But at the end of the day, it's much easier to become more efficient and save $2 to $3 million a cash. space in the middle and bottom of your roster than it is to find out of the O'Carlson. So it's the cost of doing business. The rising cap helps. And yeah, you know, just be more judicious and find some more diamonds in the rough. And, you know, you save that money throughout your roster. Then he's down to, you know, by implication of 15, 14 million AV, it's fine. But, you know, by all indications, is a potentially transformational player for that team.

And, yeah, I think that number is okay. I know you mentioned this earlier as well, but as much, much as we like the structuring of the deal from the flyers perspective, it feels like the only way they probably beyond some of the signing bonus stuff you mentioned could have stacked a deck even further is by preemptively trading away their 27 first as well to push the fourth pick they have to give down the line and make it even less valuable. But beyond that, it's tough to quibble with, I have a couple other things that I want to run by you and see if you put any stock into it. One is I do think there's some value in as obvious of a deal as this was for Leo Carlson to sign.

sounds like he had four or five other offers. He wound up taking this one. Having a top player of this caliber sign up with you, even if it might not necessarily mean that they specifically want to play for you or want to leave their team. They're just taking the best offer available. Having a player actually take that offer, considering what we've seen this offseason, particularly with a team like the Seattle Cracken, where they keep offering money to have big name players. And they're like, no, thanks. We have other options. And I do think it probably represents a fair signal that organizations in a pretty healthy space and players at least view it as a viable opportunity forward.

And so I view that as a bit of a win for them as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think players and agents and everyone take notice of an event like this and it puts the team not on the map, but first in mind maybe and other opportunities might come their way. And yeah, like we talked about a minute ago, it's a good signal, it's a good signal of the fan base, it's a good signal of the guys on the team

that we're willing to do anything and spend however we need to to make this team as good as possible, as fast as possible. And yeah, I think the downsides are really limited. And I don't think, you know, there's always a dance of sort of putting the weights on each side of the barbell on an offer sheet of like, you know, we want to get this player at a number that is okay for us without being too prohibitive, but also doesn't make it too easy on the other team to match. And I think the way they structured it and the number they landed on is probably pretty close to sort of the optimal way to go.

However, this plays out in the end. What do you think about the impact it has on the market from a perspective of like, I think partly why we haven't seen offer sheets of this caliber in the past as well is because teams are very cognizant of the trickle down effect of like, all right, let's say we sent out this offer and really kind of elevate the benchmark of what some of these comps are for young players like this moving forward. it's going to potentially affect our own negotiations in terms of how much we're going to have to pay our own guys down the road. And I think teams have been kind of cognizant of being conservative for the most part with that. All of a sudden now you get something like this. I know whether it's Baderd or Fintilly or Macklin-Colabrini in a year,

everyone's going to kind of point to that and be like, all right, like how much does this change those conversations and what are these numbers going to keep escalating too? I think it's a natural product they're going to keep going up. We've seen this in other leagues, right? Like the NFL being a good example where the highest pay. quarterback is probably going to be the one who signed most recently. And if you keep getting this type of exponential cap growth, that's going to be the case with the amount of young talent that's

continually entering the league. But do you have any thoughts on sort of how, what impact that's going to have on future negotiations for some of these young players? And then whether a team like the Flyers or whoever else that, you know, clearly is comfortable announcing that they're going to be in the bidding at these wages and is going to be willing to spend a bunch money and has deep pockets, benefiting from that in terms of other players potentially shaking loose when difficult conversations happen for teams that might not be comfortable paying as much for one guy? I want to say I don't know.

I know the easy answer is like, well, how is MacMessal Bruney or Connor Bedard going to take less than Leo Carlson when they can easily come into a room and say, you know, by most metrics I'm more valuable than him. So I should be paid more than him. So do it. And I don't want to say like we're going to see more Connor McDavid contracts where he takes almost half his market value.

you to sort of give his team a couple more years to win a cup where he's played for a long time and has a lot of relationships. I don't think we'll see that extreme. But I do think it's case by case. And if you get a player, maybe more of a celebrating than a Bidari, given where San Jose's at or at least was at, you know, prior to the summer was like, you know, I'm surrounded by other really good young players who I like to play alongside in a market I like with management and coach maybe who I like.

Here's the number that makes me happy. and maybe it's a little bit less than the max, and maybe it's a little bit less than if I took, you know, the offer sheet from the most desperate club on the market or whatever, but I'm okay with it. I think we might still see that, and, you know, not necessarily charity work, but, you know, a guy might say,

hey, listen, I'll take 17 or 18 instead of holding a out for 20 just because whatever. You know, I'm okay with that for my team. I also, you know, don't necessarily think there should be a stigma on a player simply saying, listen, I'm worth my market value. I'm a max player. players and other leagues get max contracts all the time. Why shouldn't I?

Just because players haven't before. So I do think it will be case by case. It'll depend on the player or the agent, how happy those names, you know, you sort of mentioned are when they come up. But I want to say if I was betting on it, you know, you probably see some of these guys just read up where they are at numbers around,

maybe a little less, maybe a tiny bit more. Then we saw Carlson or maybe the term changes on those deals as well. but I'm hesitant to just say that is now the floor for players of his talent level on and above, but we'll see. I do think it reinforces something you and I have talked about before the concept of

identifying talent and then going as long as possible as early as you can. We've seen the HABs do this and earlier this week they did so again with Demidov and are sitting pretty nicely with their core players signed up for really reasonable salaries for the rest of their primes. The Sabres come to mind, like especially

over the next calendar year with guys like Oslin and Helen who's the sharks for all the reasons you mentioned. So I think definitely something to keep in mind moving forward. You got any final thoughts on just offer sheets in general? I know you were very fascinated by the concept of arbitrage and not necessarily applying it to what the devils did with Barrett Hayden, but it's kind of these more modest approaches, right? Like similar to what we saw previously with Broberg and Holloway, where you kind of identify a middle tier player and you put in an offer that you know, puts the team in a real bind and makes them more willing to potentially walk away from the player and take the picks because this is certainly an extreme example.

And I'm not sure how much more of it we're going to see moving forward and we'll still see what the outcome is. But I do think with these two that we've seen now, this becoming a viable path for talent acquisition is an interesting conversation. Yeah, I mean, like we talked about, I think we've seen ones around now that are sort of tinged with a little bit of bad blood as opposed to the, you know, mid-level range, pure strategic like blank slate offer sheets, not to use two Taylor's references. But, you know, I think those are the real interesting ones that can be really helpful of sort of saying, hey, here's a player who hasn't broken out yet

of a team in a cap crunch, and let's just throw, you know, 4.7 at them for a second. And we saw that with, you know, Barrett Hayton, but maybe there's some young players as well that could maybe benefit of being targeted like that. The hated one also is, I think we haven't talked about, but I think it's interesting because, you know,

Utah's really got to decide. Do, you know, is Andre Tarigni? Is our team going to play this player this year in our system? And if not, you know, on our roster, if not, there's no reason to match at all. So it's a really unique situation. And that, you know, they might, I think they have some outs there if they wanted to. They have a couple players like Brandon Tan, I have in the mid-2s. They might be able to move out.

But they also just added, you know, Vinie Strochick. And, you know, if Hayden doesn't fit for one year, then he doesn't fit at all. We're going to UFA. So that's a neat one. But, yeah, no, I like your point. I think down the road we'll see, you know, maybe interesting scenarios where even like, you know, guys who got mostly the HL experience but are offer sheet eligible, get bets from teams who just want to poach them and use that element of surprise. Do you want to end today's show talking a little bit about Jason Robertson? Sure.

So you and I have been going back and forth on this via text over the past couple weeks. And I thought especially in light of, you know, this weekend, it was a deadline for players to file for arbitration. Robertson did so and was atop the list and sort of the fallout from that I've seen, kind of portraying it as a negative for the stars. I'm not sure I necessarily see it that way. And maybe it's wishful thinking on my part because I'm just assuming that like common sense and rational thought are going to prevail. And the stars, a team who are firmly in their competitive window are going to realize that Robertson is their best player, their best forward, certainly. and retaining him significantly improves their path ahead as opposed to kind of quibbling over small amounts of money

even in the short term. There is obvious risk going the one-year arbitration route, right? I think for the stars, it contractually walks him to UFA status on July 1st next summer. And then for Robertson, there's an element of injury risk, not getting that long-term security after he's coming off a season where I think he scored the fourth-most goals in the league. But I still feel like the path,

ahead from a long-term perspective is within view and very doable and in a way might make the most sense in terms of fitting for the stars under their cap sheet this season while also making Robertson whole financially long-term on whatever extension comes beyond that. Yeah, I think that's a plausible scenario here, which I think you're alluding to, which is to do a one-year deal that's, you know, more compatible with their cap picture for this one year and then on Jan 1 or whenever giving him a long-term, you know, seven-year extension at a potentially much higher number. I think that's possible more than in other situations too,

just because he's a homegrown talent. They have a long history together. Jim knows it pretty well, you know, one of the most respected GM. So I think there's a decent element of trust. You know, they've had the same owner, same GM throughout Robertson's career. So I think to the extent, you know, they did sit down and, you know, technically so to speak, you can only agree to the one-year deal, but I think

the unspoken agreement would be it's a one-year deal and given who you are and where we are, there's going to be a discussion on an extension pretty quickly once that's allowed. That might be the right outcome because it does sound like, at least from what's been spoken publicly that, you know, in a perfect world, both player and team want to find a fit there

and you can see why, just given how successful. that team's been. And also, you know, they're one of those teams in a tax favorable setup that gives them some other advantages as well. Yeah, as we've documented, painstakingly so here. But the fact that this keeps dragging out gives us reason to keep hammering at home. The stars are essentially in a one-year window here financially where they can't give Robertson the 14 million annually. He wants next year when the cap goes up to 113 and say again's 9.85 comes off the books. they're going to have a ton of cap space to work with and are going to be able to accommodate it. So I think the most logical path ahead is you just remove either Sam Steele or Radic Faxa from their cap sheet.

It gives you about 12.7 million in cap space. You can fit in whatever the arbitration ruling is. I assume it'll be somewhere in the 12s. And then you go seven years beyond that when he's eligible January 1st before he hits UFA and elevated above the 14 he was asking for. And you put all that math together and it comes out slightly ahead of what he would have gotten on his prefer. or eight-year extension right now. But I don't know, there's this weird cat and mouse game. I know they've tried to trade him on a couple of occasions.

He clearly wants to stand Dallas, just wants to get paid more than they're offering. And it's gotten to a point where like he's reluctant, reportedly, to take a shorter term deal to make the money work because there's no trade protection that comes with the first year. And that would make him vulnerable to being traded somewhere else. And with extra years, a team would pay more for the stars to acquire them. So I'm really not sure where they're at at this point beyond for. other reporting, but I think it's such a fascinating situation. And I'm still thinking it's going to be a long-term fit between the two of them,

but at this point, who knows? Yeah, I think that's all fair. And, you know, he's in a special spot too where, like you said, injury aside, he'll be able to sign a long-term deal somewhere for a lot of money. And if he's really fixated on Dallas, maybe there's some risk to be taken there that gets, you know, team and player where they want to be. All right, buddy. Well, this was a blast.

I'm glad we got to do this. I know you're a hot commodity talking offer sheets and content. contract talk and business dynamics and all of that in light of the Leo Carlson use. So I'm glad you fit us in on your busy schedule. I'm going to let you go here. And if you want more contract-related observations from Steve, I highly recommend following him on Twitter at Steve Warrior. If you want more analysis of this whole Leo Carlson situation, you should subscribe to the PDO cast Patreon feed. We're going to have Charlie O'Connor on the show Tuesday. We're going to get into the on-ice considerations, talk more about the Flyers perspective and just get into a bunch more detail on the matter.

We're going to have new shows on the feed throughout the whole off season as well. Unlike previous summers, where we take July and August off for the most part, we're going to keep it going. This summer, we are not taking that break. We're going to do two or three episodes on that feed every week for our subscribers. So please join us for that. We're going to have a lot of fun with it throughout this off season. If you enjoyed today's show, also give us a five-star review. Wherever you listen, that would be greatly appreciated.

And that is all for today from us. We'll be back soon with plenty more. Thank you for listening to the Hockey, Ocast Streaming, on the SportsNed Radio. network.