Pat Verbeek Admits the Cap Era Changed Everything After the Ducks Matched That $90 Million Offer Sheet

The Anaheim Ducks had a decision to make. And not the kind you sleep on.

Philadelphia Flyers GM Daniel Briere sent over an offer sheet for Leo Carlsson that was unlike anything the NHL had ever seen. Five years. Ninety million dollars. An $18 million cap hit, which is $1 million more per year than Kirill Kaprizov makes. That is not a typo.

The Ducks matched it. Of course they did. But the whole thing forced Pat Verbeek to say something out loud that a lot of NHL front offices are probably thinking but won’t admit.

“I think increased cap space has led to different circumstances,” Verbeek told reporters on Thursday, via Greg Wyshynski of ESPN. “We’re going to have to do business in a different manner, going forward.”

This is the part that matters. The Ducks didn’t just keep a 22-year-old who scored 29 goals and 38 assists last season. They also kept him instead of taking four first-round draft picks from Philadelphia as compensation. Verbeek said the more talks they had, the easier the call got.

“It was speaking to us that we need to match the offer sheet,” he said, per Zach Cavanagh on X.

And maybe that’s the real lesson here. Because four first-rounders sounds like a haul. But it is also four guys who might turn into something years from now. Carlsson is something right now. The Ducks picked him second overall in 2023. He is the kind of center you build around, not trade away for lottery tickets.

But Verbeek’s comment about doing business differently is what hangs in the air. The salary cap is going up. Like, really up. Teams have more room to get weird with offer sheets. The days of the offer sheet being a rare, borderline mythical tool might be over. Philadelphia tried something aggressive and it forced Anaheim to pay a number they probably didn’t want to pay this early.

Now the Ducks are locked in for five years at a record number. Carlsson is a Duck. And Verbeek just told the whole league that the math has changed.

The question nobody is asking out loud yet is: what happens when the next team tries this with another young star? Because they will. And now the playbook is out there.