July 10, 2026
Marc DesRosiers/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
The Flyers didn't get Leo Carlsson in the end, but you have to give them credit for the big swing they took to try.
The Flyers didn't get Leo Carlsson.
General manager Danny Brière took some major initiative and put together a front-loaded and signing bonus-heavy offer sheet for five years and $90 million, which immediately made the star 21-year-old center the highest-paid player in the NHL – at $18 million per season – and backed Carlsson's current team, the Anaheim Ducks, into a cap-strapped corner.
They needed a true No. 1 center. Carlsson was their shot, and Brière went to about every reasonable length imaginable to try and pry him away from the Ducks, in what would've been a league-redefining blockbuster.
But the Ducks matched the offer sheet on Thursday, and the Flyers ultimately came up empty in their offseason swing for the fences.
And right now, that's disappointing on the Philadelphia end of the past several days. How can it not be?
If the Flyers get Carlsson, they suddenly address the biggest flaw in their roster construction. They go from a young team on the playoff bubble to wondering less about whether they'll make it, and more about how far they can actually go. And just maybe, if one or two more prospects come along and a couple more guys take another step, that Stanley Cup window that the organization hoped would be there, somewhere down the line, would've started to open up now.
But that scenario is all a "what if" daydream now, right there with what the Flyers could've been had the Nashville Predators never matched for Shea Weber 14 years ago.
Take a step back, though, and breathe for a second.
This isn't it for the Flyers, and it might not be it for Brière's hunt for a No. 1 center either.
It might be just that: a breather, with the attempt to go for Carlsson standing to still have an extreme domino effect.
As they are, Porter Martone and the Flyers should be just getting started.
The reality of the situation is, yes, the Flyers would immediately be a much better team with Carlsson at the top of their lineup, and they were fully in a spot to afford him on the record cap hit that they set thanks to their nearly $30 million in cap space.
But part of why they were in a spot for Carlsson to make them better to begin with was because the Flyers developed into a good enough team to have a missing piece like him. And they got good enough for it to be worth it for Brière to take that huge of a gamble on an offer sheet, at that kind of cost, and then an additional four first-round draft picks over the next four years to try and get him.
That's important, even though it didn't work.
The Flyers are young, and they'll be fine if they try to just keep developing in-house for another year. They'll have Porter Martone for a full season, Denver Barkey and Alex Bump, too, and they'll hope to have Matvei Michkov on his "vengeance tour" and Tyson Foerster fully healthy, while next-in-line defensive prospects like Hunter McDonald and Oliver Bonk are aiming to challenge for a roster spot in training camp.
All of those aforementioned names are no older than 24. They still have a lot of runway to get better.
Plus, while the Flyers are still in need of a top-line center, their depth down the middle is a lot better now than it was a couple years ago, between Trevor Zegras, a reinvented Sean Couturier, the dependable Noah Cates and Christian Dvorak, and if they opt to keep him there, Barkey, too.
They just don't have that ace in the hole, and it definitely won't be Carlsson.
Danny Brière and Keith Jones probably aren't shying away from the big offseason swings after the Leo Carlsson offer sheet got matched.
But it might still be someone, because the fact that the Flyers were fully willing to make Carlsson the highest-paid player in the league, other players saw that. Stars saw that.
And the fact that they were fully ready to part with four first-round picks in four years as part of the league's offer sheet compensation rule to make Carlsson happen, other GMs had to have seen that, too.
And that's valuable in its own way, because even though the Flyers didn't end up with Carlsson, their effort to try sent a message.
Everyone in the NHL knows now, from wide-eyed players thinking about their next big deal to potentially nervous execs, that the Flyers are serious, that Brière is ready to get ambitious, exhaust any and every option to make his team better, and swing for the fences.
And there's going to be other chances to swing.
Auston Matthews' current contract with the Maple Leafs, for example, is up in 2028.
Also due up in 2028, and in the reality of a separate situation: Connor McDavid. His two-year extension begins this coming season, and that's essentially a two-year timer for the Edmonton Oilers to get their act together and win the Stanley Cup with him.
It's a two-year timer for the Flyers to steadily get better, too, keep money free, and maybe catch a bigger fish's eye.
They missed on Carlsson. But they're not done.
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