Carlsson Is Worth Every Dollar. The Problem Is the 46 Points Walking Into a Surgery Suite.

The number that reframes everything about Anaheim's offseason isn't $18 million, and it isn't 14 — Carlsson's new AAV and his NHL Network center ranking, both legitimately earned. It's 33. That's how many assists Troy Terry posted last season, making him the Ducks' most prolific playmaker by that measure, the connective tissue between Carlsson's shot creation and the scoreboard. Terry is now five to six months removed from hip surgery, and his absence at the start of 2026-27 isn't a footnote to the Carlsson story. It's the story.

Carlsson's ranking is deserved, and I don't want to undercut it. His 48 points in 49 games last season weren't just volume — they came with a plus-four on a team that finished minus-18 in goal differential, which means he was doing real two-way work while the roster around him bled. The Ducks paid $90 million to match Philadelphia's offer sheet because they had to, and the ranking confirms they were right to do it. A 21-year-old center rated 14th in the league, with upside still ahead of him, is the kind of asset you don't let walk. The contract math made sense the moment the ink dried.

But Carlsson didn't produce those 48 points alone, and that's where the roster picture gets uncomfortable. Terry's 33 assists weren't just a counting stat — they represented how the Ducks generated offense through movement and connection rather than raw shot volume. Gauthier is a legitimate second cornerstone at 42 points and earns every word of his own elite ranking, but his game is built on finishing, not facilitating. When the Ducks needed someone to make the pass that creates the shot, Terry was the answer. Now that answer is on a recovery timeline, and what's behind him on the depth chart is a collection of additions — Sean Farrell from the AHL, AJ Greer signed for depth and experience, Nikita Klepov arriving straight from the OHL — that have never been tested at this level in a meaningful way.

The late-season collapse made the stakes of that depth gap concrete. Over the final ten games, Anaheim allowed 4.1 goals per game, nearly a full goal more than their pace over the preceding twenty. The offense dried up at the same time. Gauthier kept generating chances — 3.8 shots on goal per game in that stretch — but converted just 5.3 percent of them, two goals on 38 shots. That's the kind of run where you need your secondary contributors to pick up the slack, and they didn't. McTavish, who has since been traded to St. Louis, finished at minus-eight on the season. Granlund played just 31 games. The depth was already thin before Terry went under the knife.

My read is that the Ducks are making a coherent long-term bet and an uncomfortable short-term one simultaneously, and they know it. Trading McTavish for draft capital and shedding Zellweger signals that management isn't pretending this is a playoff roster — they're building toward one. The Carlsson extension and the Mintyukov lock-up are the foundation; the 2026-27 season is the bridge year where that foundation either holds or shows cracks. What concerns me is that the bridge is narrower than the rankings suggest. Carlsson at 14th in the league and Gauthier at 19th among wingers are real, verifiable assets. Everything behind them is a question mark wearing a jersey. The Ducks won 24 of 36 one-goal games last season — a rate that papered over their structural fragility. That kind of variance doesn't repeat. When it regresses, the roster beneath the top line is what gets exposed, and right now that roster is missing its most important connector.