Carlsson Is Worth $18 Million. The Question Is Whether the Ducks Can Afford to Build Around Him.

Macklin Celebrini's five-year, $18.8 million AAV extension with San Jose landed this week and immediately did something clarifying: it bumped Leo Carlsson to second place on the NHL's salary hierarchy, and in doing so, it reframed the entire Anaheim offseason. Not because the Ducks overpaid — the market just confirmed they didn't — but because being right about a player and being able to build around him are two entirely different problems.

Here is the number that matters most right now, and it isn't $18 million. It's 48. That's how many points Carlsson produced in 49 games last season, the output that justified matching Philadelphia's offer sheet in July. At 21, he's already the engine of this offense, and the market — Celebrini at $18.8 million, Connor Bedard at $15 million AAV — confirms that elite young centers command this kind of money. Anaheim wasn't wrong to pay it. What the price tag does, though, is compress everything else. Every dollar committed to Carlsson is a dollar not available for the defensive depth that collapsed so visibly last April, when the Ducks surrendered 4.1 goals per game over their final ten games and won twice.

That defensive fragility is the structural reality I've been tracking all summer, and nothing has changed it. Jackson LaCombe anchors the blue line — 34 points and 24.4 minutes per game last season — but the tier below him is thin enough to be alarming. John Carlson is gone to Carolina. Olen Zellweger was moved to Buffalo. What's left is a group that, under pressure last spring, forced Pavel Mintyukov into a 30% workload surge just to stay afloat. Mintyukov's new five-year extension secures him long-term, which is the right call, but securing a player and solving a depth crisis are not the same thing. The Ducks have done the former; the latter remains open.

The offense is no cleaner. Troy Terry — 46 points, the team's leading assist man — is out for the start of 2026-27 recovering from hip surgery. Mason McTavish was traded to St. Louis. That's two of the team's top six forwards gone, and what's been added in their place is a mix of youth and hope: Nikita Klepov on an entry-level deal, AJ Greer on a four-year contract at $4.25 million AAV, a minor-league acquisition in Sean Farrell. These are depth moves, not replacements. Cutter Gauthier's 42 points give Carlsson a legitimate running mate, but the supporting cast around them is thinner than it was twelve months ago, when that cast still wasn't good enough to make the playoffs.

My read is this: the Carlsson commitment is correct in isolation and genuinely difficult in context. The Ducks are paying franchise-center money for a player who is not yet producing at franchise-center volume — 48 points is a strong season, not a transcendent one, and the roster around him is being rebuilt on the fly with a depleted defense and a recovering top wing. The one-goal variance that papered over last season's structural cracks — that 24-12 record in tight games — is not a repeatable foundation. Celebrini's extension just told the market that Anaheim's bet on Carlsson was correctly priced. What it didn't tell them is how to fill the gaps that $18 million per year leaves behind.