It's going to be a long and agonizing wait for Flyers fans until this Friday, July 10, when the Anaheim Ducks have to make a decision on the Leo Carlsson offer sheet.

And that's a lot of time to think and argue in one way or the other. Fans, from all across the NHL even, already are.

But here's the short of it: Leo Carlsson is absolutely worth it for the Philadelphia Flyers.

He's the star No. 1 center they've long been looking for, who would transform their lineup immediately.

He's 21, and would fit directly in with the young core and the timeline the organization has been establishing for the past several years.

And he serves as the ultimate show that the Flyers are serious about becoming eventual Stanley Cup contenders, and that when it comes to getting who they need to do it, they can and will be ultra aggressive about the pursuit.

Carlsson is their guy.

He's their game-changer, and general manager Danny Brière might as well have tossed a grenade at a vulnerable Ducks organization in the form of that record $18 million cap hit to try and pry him away.

Now it's the wait to see if it actually works, and that might just be the hardest part.

But it'll be worth it if it does, because having someone who plays like Carlsson does will immediately make the Flyers leaps better.

Some more thoughts on the five-year, $90 million Carlsson offer sheet that the Flyers – and really the rest of the hockey world – are now waiting with bated breath on to see what Anaheim does...

Can the Flyers afford this?

To put it bluntly: Yes. 

They wouldn't have thrown a league-high $18 million per season at Carlsson if they couldn't.

The real question is would it handcuff them?

The answer: Not really, though it would make the immediate salary cap picture a lot tighter.

As of Monday morning, the Flyers have exactly $29,565,416 of projected cap space, according to PuckPedia. Right now, that isn't including Carlsson's offer sheet since he's still a Duck, or the contract extensions for Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale that still need to get done.

If Anaheim doesn't match and the Flyers get Carlsson, that would knock their remaining cap space down to $11,565,416.

Recent buzz around Drysdale indicates that he'll get a 3-4 year deal in the $6.25 million per season range, per the Daily Faceoff's Anthony Di Marco, so that would leave the room left to get something done with Zegras at $5,315,416.

But there's good and bad to keep in mind, along with the awareness that Zegras will probably land somewhere in the $7-9 million range if and when his extension gets done.

The good is that the NHL salary cap will gradually increase over the next several years, starting at $104 million this coming season, to $113.5 million in 2027-28, then to $123 million in 2028-29. The Flyers will get more breathing room.

The bad is that the Flyers do still have to fit under the current cap for 2026-27, and that other core young pieces are going to come due. Matvei Michkov will be an RFA after next season, then Porter Martone, Alex Bump, and Denver Barkey are set to reach RFA status in 2028. The Flyers will have to be constantly thinking ahead over the next several years if the chips do fall their way with Carlsson.

It can all be manageable, though, with this being the spot where possible trades of Ramus Ristolainen (1 year left at $5.1 million), Owen Tippett (6 years left at $6.2 million per), Noah Cates (3 years at $4 million per), and even Nick Seeler (2 years at $2.7 million per) come into play to gain back breathing room and maybe even a bit of draft capital – because they will need both for the road ahead if they, again, do walk out of this week with Carlsson.

So to sum it up, it is doable for the Flyers to manage an $18 million cap hit for Carlsson. But it will make their overall cap picture a lot harder to navigate as they proceed, because inevitably, an $18 million cap hit is going to raise the floor for everyone coming up next, especially Martone if he stays on track as a future star.

One more thing to note is the overall payment and signing bonus-heavy structure that the Flyers set up for Carlsson. 

Here it is as laid out by PuckPedia:

But that's way more for the Ducks to worry about with Friday approaching.

For the Flyers, this is the part where being owned by Comcast comes in handy.

James Guillory/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The Flyers will have to get ahead on Porter Martone's next contract.

What about the draft picks?

As part of the offer sheet compensation, the Flyers would have to forfeit their own four first-round draft picks over the next four years to Anaheim.

They would get to keep the first owed to them from Toronto for either 2027 or 2028 as part of the Scott Laughton trade from the 2025 trade deadline.

But if Anaheim decides not to match and takes the picks, then that would leave the Flyers with just one first-rounder via Toronto through 2030, and that's bad, right?

Sure, but if the Flyers are at a point now where all of those firsts would be in the 20-32 range, they collectively won't compare to what Carlsson would bring the team right now – with all due respect to Oliver Bonk (22nd overall in 2023) and the latest first-rounder Maksim Sokolovskii (27th overall in 2026), who the Flyers do have genuine hopes of being regular NHL defensemen.

JFreshHockey, a popular hockey analytics account on Twitter (don't tell me it's X), posted a list of 300 players drafted in the back half of the draft's first round over the years, and posed the question of whether any combo of four names on the list would be worth more than Carlsson:

Can the Ducks afford this?

The Flyers submitted the offer sheet betting that Anaheim can't, and right now, the Ducks look pretty backed into a corner.

Carlsson's $18 million cap hit is currently on Anaheim's books, via PuckPedia, and no matter what, he'll be getting paid that full $90 million over five years. His signing of the offer sheet guaranteed that. It's just a matter of who is going to be paying it.

But the Ducks also just rushed into a five-year contract with another one of their RFAs in defenseman Pavel Mintyukov, at a $7.2 million cap hit in the wake of the Carlsson offer sheet and perhaps the threat of getting blindsided by another.

The Ducks have $9,973,395 of projected cap space left, per PuckPedia, with 41-goal scorer Cutter Gauthier also sitting there as an RFA – a notorious name among Flyers fans, and a player whose asking price is now guaranteed to be way above that just shy of $10 million the Ducks have to work with, given that his camp is obviously seeing that $18 million cap hit, too.

So the Ducks got caught.

Anaheim general manager Pat Verbeek let all three of those aforementioned names, with each being a crucial part of the Ducks' own core, reach restricted free agency without extensions to be left vulnerable. He banked on no other team being brave enough to utilize the offer sheet, on his players not signing them anyway even if they were offered, and really, no other team being wise enough to see how fragile the Ducks' situation really was.

Verbeek probably didn't bank on anyone being ambitious enough to make Carlsson the highest annually paid player in the NHL either.

But he guessed wrong on all fronts. Brière was daring enough to take the risk, and of course Carlsson was never going to say no to that kind of money. And now Verbeek is in some real hot water.

Verbeek can try to trade off parts for more cap space. The problem is, Anaheim's roster suddenly got dangerously thin.

The Ducks lost regular defensemen Jacob Trouba, Radko Gudas, Olen Zellweger, and John Carlson to either trade or free agency in the past couple weeks, which leaves Mintyukov and Jackson LaCombe left to anchor a now very underwhelming blue line group.

And maybe the Ducks can part with veteran forwards Chris Kreider ($6.5 million cap hit), Alex Killorn ($6.25 million cap hit), or Frank Vatrano ($4.57 million cap hit) for breathing room, but that only strips their roster down further. Plus, each of those players has a modified no-trade clause to navigate around, and with each of them pushing in their mid-to-late 30s.

If Verbeek comes calling any team trying to make a deal in these next few days, they're going to know why, and know they don't have to give him an inch.

So the Ducks can lose Carlsson, take the picks, and shift their focus to Gauthier. Or they can keep Carlsson, and get left in a jam with Gauthier, while the Flyers keep the draft capital and the cap space to try and do something else.

But no matter what, this is brutal for the Anaheim Ducks. Brière knew what he was doing here.

Jayne Kamin-Oncea/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The cost of Cutter Gauthier's contract will factor into whether the Ducks can keep Leo Carlsson or not.

Are the Flyers at risk of retaliation?

They are, and Brière probably knew this, too. 

That leads further into the fact that the Flyers will have to stay forward-thinking over the next few years.

But they are in a good spot to protect themselves.

Tyson Foerster's recent eight-year extension, at a pretty team-friendly $7.1 million cap hit, takes him off the RFA board entirely.

And Zegras and Drysdale both just filed for salary arbitration on Sunday, which prevents them from signing any offer sheet pitched to them. Their contract talks are strictly between them and the Flyers now.

Michkov is the next big Flyers RFA due up next summer, and Martone will be an RFA in 2028.

Those are the big two who other teams could try to target and theoretically punch back at the Flyers with an offer sheet.

But so long as the Flyers stay smart and get their contract extensions done before their key young players even reach restricted free agency, they'll be OK.

It's the mistakes the Ducks already made, which gave the Flyers the opening to go after Carlsson.

And it's a safe bet that the Flyers have enough awareness to know not to let those same mistakes happen to them.

Charles LeClaire/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Trevor Zegras should still get his contract extension through all this.

*All cap info and contract numbers via PuckPedia

SIGN UP HERE to receive the PhillyVoice Sports newsletter

Follow Nick on Twitter: @itssnick

Follow Nick on Bluesky: @itssnick

Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports