The Philadelphia Flyers have put the entire league on notice, signing the Anaheim Ducks’ Leo Carlsson to an epic five-year offer sheet. With an AAV of $18 million, the deal will make the 21-year-old center the highest-paid player in hockey, creating a gargantuan decision for a Ducks team that’s still on the rise. The $18 million question: Should the Ducks match the offer sheet or should they take the compensation, a whopping four first-round picks?Let’s dig in, starting with the Flyers’ side of the equation.Leo Carlsson finishes off the 2-on-1 chance Why did the Flyers do this?It’s not enough to say “Leo Carlsson is already really good and will only get better as he enters his prime.” From a Philadelphia-specific context, the question has more to do with timing. Is this team really one player away, no matter how good, to be giving up that kind of draft capital? The answer, honestly, is kind of.The Flyers surprisingly made the playoffs last season on the back of a young, but very deep team. While some might expect a step back for the club, there’s enough talent up-and-down the lineup to believe the team could stay competitive next season, especially as their young players continue to blossom. The one thing missing: genuine star power, especially down the middle where their current best option, Trevor Zegras, profiles more as a 2C and mostly plays wing anyway. Carlsson has the potential to be truly great with the upside of being the kind of top-10 center championship teams are usually built around. Put him at the top of the depth chart, and Philadelphia’s forward group starts making a ton of sense.Looking at things from a Cup Checklist perspective, it’s pretty easy to see Carlsson one day filling out that glaring red “need” at the very top. Even if he doesn’t currently and there are still some top-end issues, Carlsson gives the Flyers a real shot at filling the team’s biggest hole.That Carlsson, 21, is in a similar age cohort as Porter Martone (19) and Matvei Michkov (21) adds another layer to that. It gives the team a budding elite core up front still outside of their prime. Martone being so effective right out of the gate last season is the big X-factor here as it helps move the Flyers up a tier going into next season. Carlsson only adds to that as a legit 1C where the Flyers would be the third best team in the Metro on paper going into next season — with plenty of room to grow considering the upside of those three forwards.Getting that kind of franchise centerpiece is very difficult to do outside of the draft and the Flyers becoming a likely playoff team makes that avenue unlikely. With those types of players not traded often, an offer sheet was the best route.Can Carlsson live up to this contract?Here’s the crutch; in order to give this offer sheet a real shot, all contract efficiency had to go out the window. Just paying Carlsson his current worth would be an easy match for Anaheim, a team with $38 million in cap space. So too would any small overpay. For this to really work, it would have to be a massive overpay, one big enough to give the Ducks real pause as to whether it was actually worth it.RFA deals are usually where teams build value, as they generally get paid 10-to-20 percent less than UFAs due to team control. Carlsson’s deal is obviously far from that. Even factoring for significant growth from both the salary cap and Carlsson himself, he just isn’t an $18 million player.With Kirill Kaprizov making $17 million, Cale Makar soon to be asking for the same and the max contract sitting at 20 percent ($20.8 million), it’s easy to see how Carlsson is nowhere near worth $18 million. For now, he’s a solid 1C, but that kind of money requires MVP-level ability. We’re talking a top-five player in the world.