While most of the talk about the Anaheim Ducks' off-season has, understandably, been focused on Leo Carlsson, the franchise still has one last big piece of business to do ahead of next season.

And what they do could define how the franchise moves forward for years to come.

That's because Cutter Gauthier is a restricted free agent ineligible for an offer sheet and needs a new contract, and figuring out what that will look like is extremely difficult.

Earlier this week on the Spittin' Chiclets podcast, ex-NHL defenseman Keith Yandle said he'd heard Gauthier won't take less than the $18-million AAV Carlsson got from the Philadelphia Flyers via an offer sheet. Regardless of whether that's entirely true, it highlights the unique position the Ducks now find themselves in.

Even independent of the Carlsson situation, the rapidly rising salary cap in the next few years, and all the rest, there just aren't many players in recent memory who have accomplished what Gauthier did during his age-21 season.

He scored 41 goals.

Only 10 other players in the salary cap era have done that by the same age: Alex Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, Connor McDavid, Eric Staal, Jack Hughes, Patrik Laine, Evgeni Malkin, Alex DeBrincat, Macklin Celebrini, and Auston Matthews. Basically, all big names who later signed big contracts, or in Celebrini and Gauthier's case, are about to.

It makes the Gauthier extension incredibly difficult to calculate, because there aren't many comparables that make a ton of sense here, especially if the salary cap continues to rise.

If the hockey world is already broadly accepting Celebrini, who is already eligible to sign an extension, will basically get a blank check from the San Jose Sharks and could even be a max-contract player, then Gauthier could credibly argue he should at least be swimming in the same pool, and the $18-million AAV isn't a crazy ask.

But does his mindset change now that Connor Bedard has signed with the Chicago Blackhawks for five years at a $15 million AAV?

An $18 million AAV would be incredibly difficult for Anaheim to swing right now, with only a smidge more than $9 million in cap space. It would require Anaheim to move probably one or two of their veteran contracts, thinning out their depth. This is a high-ceiling player coming off his entry-level deal, so GM Pat Verbeek, a famously tough negotiator, should probably do whatever he can to make the deal work.

But if Gauthier wants "Carlsson money," it would probably require him to sign a max-term contract. NHL teams are usually willing to pay guys to sign away at least some UFA years, and the fact that Gauthier isn't even eligible for an offer sheet, let alone close to arbitration status, takes away some of his leverage.

He could withhold his services and not sign until Anaheim meets his demands, but the likelihood that he can hold the Ducks' little webbed feet to the fire with the threat of a season-long holdout seems pretty close to zero. If he goes seven years, $18 million makes sense. Shorter than that? Probably not.

The Ducks would likely be eager to sign that max-term deal (still allowed to be eight years until Sept. 16). That would buy the remainder of Gauthier's 20s. It might be tough to swing financially — it's not like the franchise is a revenue juggernaut — but there are ways to make it work.

A medium-term deal, around the five years Carlsson got, doesn't seem all that tenable. If the goal is the biggest money possible, that likely doesn't make a ton of sense for the franchise, especially because they won't want to have to extend both Carlsson and Gauthier at the same time again in just five years. If Gauthier is willing to be more flexible about the AAV, then it's possible, but this doesn't seem like a tenable path right now.

The other option, of course, is a short-term bridge deal.

Probably not one year, but maybe two or three. The whole point of a bridge deal is to bring down the AAV, obviously, and it allows a player to bet on himself. Gauthier's goal production more than doubled, from 20 to 41, this past season, and if he goes for a bridge deal, he can prove to Anaheim that it was repeatable; his shooting percentage went from 10.5 percent to 14.4 percent, but his shooting rate climbed from 9.8 shots on goal per 60 minutes to 13.0. Do anything close to that again, and suddenly he's only a year or two from being a $20-million player, let alone $18 million.

The other thing a bridge deal does is shift the decision to a time when the salary cap is bound to be significantly higher. The NHL and NHLPA previously agreed on salary-cap ceilings of $104 million for 2026-27 and $113.5 million for 2027-28.

After that, the limit is expected to continue to climb. In a financial environment like that, a 22-year-old coming off his entry-level contract and 41 goals is absolutely worth about $18 million (13 percent of the cap, give or take).

So it might make the most sense for Gauthier to take less than Carlsson for a couple of years — say, $8-10 million — and reset for a seismic payday in a few years. At that point, he'll still have RFA and arbitration eligibility and could really take the Ducks to the cleaners, similar to what Jason Robertson is doing with the Dallas Stars.

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