Make no mistake, the Anaheim Ducks are in a pickle. A real jam. A financial spill left for them to clean.The Philadelphia Flyers and Leo Carlsson dropped a five-year, $90 million offer sheet on their table on Fourth of July weekend, and there is no easy way to mop up the mess it has created for the Ducks.No option is particularly good for the Ducks in the bigger picture, but one must be chosen in the seven days Anaheim general manager Pat Verbeek has as he meets with his staff.Here’s the best one: Match it.Leo Carlsson finishes off the 2-on-1 chance On Friday, the Ducks decided to mull things over. They’re not commenting until the process has concluded. This comes after strong signals sent that they would match any offer sheet that comes their way. That, with more than $37 million of salary cap space available, as estimated by PuckPedia — one reason why they’ve made only small additions in free agency — they would match anything sent Carlsson’s way in minutes.And if that average annual value for the Flyers’ five-year offer were at $13 million or even $15 million, that might have been the counterreaction to Daniel Briere’s power move. The only fallout would have been cost certainty on Carlsson’s second contract created for Verbeek, a negotiation that he didn’t need to finalize and a relationship between GMs to reassess after trades they had made involving Trevor Zegras, Cutter Gauthier and Jamie Drysdale.But $18 million? The Ducks didn’t see that coming. Perhaps no one outside of Flyers HQ, either.Talks between the Ducks and Carlsson’s agent, Matt Keator, were in an active stage, and they continued into Friday morning. The Ducks have viewed the Swedish center as a franchise-leading type since they drafted him at No. 2 after Connor Bedard in 2023. Midseason thigh surgery limited him to 70 games, and his 29 goals and 67 points aren’t superstar numbers, but the Ducks and others see that the 21-year-old is only starting his rise as a star No. 1 center. His performance against the Edmonton Oilers in the playoffs showed that.The Ducks were eager to sign Carlsson to an eight-year contract before the maximum term is reduced to seven years when the new collective bargaining agreement kicks in Sept. 16. But this offer sheet raises the question: Where was that eagerness to extend Carlsson last July 1 or thereafter when the first opportunity to do so was available? It would have been a large number but not $18 million. Probably nowhere near that.When reached by The Athletic, Keator would not comment on the offer sheet or their negotiations. “We will let that process play out,” Keator said, following the lead of Verbeek and Briere after the Flyers’ stunning play to land a first-line center.