Two months after the Philadelphia Flyers tendered an aggressive $90 million offer sheet to Leo Carlsson, the Anaheim Ducks are beginning to pay the price for matching the blockbuster contract.
Former Flyers draft pick Cutter Gauthier, now a 40-goal-scorer just two years into his NHL career, is still in need of a new contract from the Ducks and remains an RFA.
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After matching the Carlsson offer sheet and making a handful of auxiliary signings, the Ducks had just $9 million in cap space to reach an agreement with Gauthier, and as we now know, that was never going to happen.
As a result, Anaheim was forced to consider gutting their roster depth and salary dump players to free up space for Gauthier, and again, no takers were found.
So, on Wednesday, veteran winger Chris Kreider was placed on unconditional waivers for the purpose of contract termination, and on Thursday, Kreider cleared waivers, making him an unrestricted free agent and freeing up $6.5 million in cap space for the Ducks.
Kreider, 35, was in the last year of his contract anyway, but because the Flyers put the Ducks in such a bind with the Carlsson offer sheet, Anaheim loses a winger with 958 regular season games of experience, and a player who scored 22 goals and 50 points for their club last year.
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The first domino has fallen.
Replacing Kreider and his 22 goals and 50 points won’t be an easy task for the Ducks either, as Troy Terry will miss the start of the season due to injury, and other depth options include Frank Vatrano, who scored five goals and nine points in 50 games last year; and newcomer A.J. Greer, a career fourth-liner who exploded for 17 goals and 32 points last year after having previously never scored more than six goals and 17 points in a single season.
That leaves a lot of heavy lifting for Carlsson, who wouldn’t have to do so on the Flyers, Gauthier, and Beckett Sennecke. Their only support offensively will come from Alex Killorn, Mikael Granlund, Vatrano, Greer, Ryan Poehling, Nathan Gaucher, Jeff Malott, Nikita Nesterenko, and Tim Washe.
Of course, it goes almost without saying that the motivation behind all of this was the Flyers simply trying to pull a lever that was available to them to try and acquire a young No. 1 center.
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It didn’t work out for them, clearly, but it also isn’t working out too well for the Ducks right now. After losing Kreider for free, they have $15.5 million to re-sign Gauthier, and there’s no telling if that will even be enough to get it done.
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