Leo Carlsson: Pat Verbeek has been looking for trouble for a long time, and he’s just found it

Félix Forget
Leo Carlsson: Pat Verbeek has been looking for trouble for a long time, and he’s just found it
Credit: YouTube (capture d'écran)

Yesterday afternoon, the Ducks watched as the Flyers made a hostile offer to Leo Carlsson. Carlsson signed a five-year contract that will pay him $18 million a year.

Barring a massive surprise, Carlsson will be the highest-paid player in the league next year. That's… something, isn't it?

But what this situation has really highlighted is just how tough Pat Verbeek's negotiating strategy is. It was complicated for Trevor Zegras and Mason McTavish… and it's still complicated for Leo Carlsson, to the point where he signed a hostile offer sheet elsewhere. And we've even reached the point where we're wondering if Carlsson signed it specifically because he wants to leave.

And it's worth noting that in the last few hours, an interview Carlsson gave last summer has really made the Ducks' GM look bad. At the time, Carlsson had stated that he would “definitely” have signed an eight-year contract worth $9.5 million per year.

But Verbeek clearly took a hard line and refused to sign him a year early. And once again, he got the trouble he was looking for.

Verbeek's negotiating tactics, when viewed objectively, also led to Zegras and McTavish eventually leaving. Both players struggled through lengthy negotiations, and the Ducks ultimately traded them away.

This allowed Zegras (who was essentially traded at a discount) to revive his career in Philadelphia. We'll see if the same happens for McTavish this season.

And beyond his own players, we know there are quite a few agents who really don't like negotiating with Verbeek. They find the whole process tedious when it comes time to talk with him, and the club fights tooth and nail over peanuts.

The Ducks had one of the brightest futures in the NHL, but their GM's cavalier attitude is really ruining what we were building in Anaheim. You have to give Verbeek credit for acquiring all that talent… but you also have to blame him for driving so many of those guys away because of the way he negotiates.

Pat Verbeek has been asking for trouble for a long time… and while he'd already run into a bit of it with the Zegras and McTavish situations, he's really hit the jackpot with the Carlsson situation. We'll see how he handles the Cutter Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov situations this summer (and, a year from now, the Beckett Sennecke situation).


In a nutshell

– Interesting.

– It starts in a few minutes.

– New contract for the Oilers defenseman.

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