A wild offseason theory about the Flyers and Matvei Michkov has been making the rounds, but it doesn’t line up with what actually happened.
The idea, pushed in a tweet from @insiderJayMoney, is that Philadelphia’s offer sheet for Leo Carlsson was never really about landing Carlsson at all. According to the theory, the Flyers were trying to turn themselves into an offer-sheet target so they could move Michkov, collect four first-round picks, and frame the whole thing as retribution from another team. The tweet said:
“My Flyers Leo Carlsson conspiracy theory. The Flyers offer sheeted Leo Carlsson knowing that the Ducks were likely to match.
This makes the Flyers an offer sheet target i.e. Matvei Michkov.
They get 4 1sts and they get rid of their “problem child” in 1 move. Briere saves face.”
That interpretation quickly found an audience. Some replies took the idea even further, including one that said, “They will be lucky if they get a two and a fourth for him.
Talented players who don’t play defense and who are cancer in the room don’t have a big shelf life in the NHL in 2026.” Another response read, “If the Flyers go down this road, they’re putting the nail in the coffin of this rebuild.
The Flyers need star talent; they lack it, even with Michkov.”
But the actual sequence of events tells a much simpler story. On July 3, the Flyers signed Carlsson to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet with an $18 million average annual value, a number that briefly made him the league’s highest-paid player.
Anaheim then had seven days to match, and the Ducks did exactly that. Carlsson stayed put, and Philadelphia got nothing back - no player, no draft picks, no compensation at all.
That matters, because the conspiracy hinges on the idea that the Flyers wanted Anaheim to decline. Instead, while the Ducks were weighing their decision, the Flyers had no real draft capital to work with in trades or elsewhere. The move also carried a public cost: it made the front office look bold and aggressive, but it didn’t help their leverage if Anaheim matched.
The bigger picture is that Philadelphia helped fuel an offer-sheet market that’s already climbing fast. The Flyers are not insulated from that reality, especially with 19-year-old Porter Martone in their system. If he keeps developing the way they expect, retaining him is going to get expensive.
As for Michkov, there’s nothing connecting him to this theory. No reporting has suggested the Flyers view him as a player they want to unload, and he remains central to their rebuild. Daniel Briere’s handling of young talent also points in the same direction: he’s been careful about timelines and hasn’t shown any sign of wanting to move core prospects.
So the cleanest read is still the right one. The Flyers took a swing at a legitimate star, missed when Anaheim matched, and then had to stand by the move while insisting they didn’t care how other teams viewed it.
Briere’s position is that the market was headed this way anyway. If that made Philadelphia a target, so be it.
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