Insider Reveals Ducks' Original Offer To Carlsson Last September

Anaheim Ducks GM Pat Verbeek didn't get Leo Carlsson signed to an extension last July when he became eligible. Or anytime before or during the past season. The Philadelphia Flyers swooped in this June with an unheard-of, record-breaking $18 million AAV offer sheet, and the rest is history. The Ducks were forced to match. 

We're learning now from insider Elliotte Friedman, on NHL Network, that the Ducks' first extension offer to Carlsson, before last season, a couple of months after he was eligible for one, wasn't too shabby. But the Carlsson camp made a calculated gamble, and it paid off handsomely.

I heard this after (the offer sheet match), that Pat Verbeek had offered Carlsson eight (years) by $10.5 million (AAV) in September. And they (Carlsson's camp) didn't come out and say 'yes', but they didn't come out and say 'no'. They basically said they decided they were going to wait. They were going to see where the new world took us. And they talked about how the salary cap over the next few years is basically going to go up 40%. 

It was obviously a pretty shrewd decision for Carlsson.

To be fair to Verbeek, at that time, last September, $10.5M would have been a pretty good number for a player of Carlsson's caliber. He was coming off a 20-goal, 45-point season in his second year in the NHL. Come to think of it, that $10.5M in that circumstance sounds very good. 

But then extensions started to be handed out during the season (granted, to much more established players), and the numbers started to rise, more and more.

The insider also revealed recently that coming into the offseason, the Ducks offered $12.5M, and Carlsson and his reps countered at $15M. They knew that they had the Flyers' bombshell $18M offer sheet in their back pocket. Anaheim didn't know that, and said 'no.'

“Pat Verbeek and the Ducks, they recognized a threat, but they didn’t recognize how big it was.”

In the end, Friedman says he feels that the lesson learned here is, 'You better take care of your business before somebody else takes care of your business.'