ANAHEIM — Mason McTavish turned twenty-three in January. He plays center for the Anaheim Ducks. Three years ago, they selected him third overall in the draft, and what has unfolded since matches exactly what rebuilding franchises promise when they draft a player that high: he has developed, his point totals have risen each season, and he reported to training camp this September as the second cornerstone of a franchise that believes it is narrowing the gap.
Leo Carlsson is the first cornerstone. McTavish is meant to be the second. Sunday, with forty-eight hours remaining before the CBA’s transition date removes the eight-year extension option, “meant to be” remains unfinished.
The deadline mechanics are well understood at this point. A player and his current team can agree to an extension lasting up to eight years if the deal is completed before September 15. After Monday, the same organization can offer no more than seven. For McTavish, that single year is not abstract. It represents the final phase of his physical prime, the latter half of a contract that will span his late twenties and extend into his early thirties. One year on the length of a deal negotiated at twenty-three is not insignificant. It is a franchise commitment that assumes a different form depending on which side of Monday it gets signed.
Pat Verbeek has served as the architect of this rebuild since 2022. He moved out veterans, stockpiled picks, and constructed a prospect pipeline that delivered, through consecutive drafts, the kind of center depth most franchises spend a generation attempting to build. McTavish third in 2021, Carlsson second in 2023. Two franchise-altering selections, both under twenty-five, both skating together in Anaheim this week.
Carlsson is signed.
McTavish is not.
In his most recent complete season, McTavish posted numbers that settled the discussion about his trajectory. Thirty-one goals and seventy-two points in eighty-two games is not the production of a player still acclimating to the league. His faceoff percentage, his capacity to handle difficult defensive-zone assignments, the manner in which he has broadened his game without sacrificing what made him valuable initially: all of it arrived in the range Verbeek has spent four years constructing. What Anaheim acquired with the third pick in 2021 is what the third pick in 2021 was meant to produce, and it has.
The contract complication is the one that accompanies any young player who arrives sooner than expected: the market has shifted beyond the figure the organization initially projected. What CBS Sports reported in early September was that McTavish’s camp has been in sustained contact with the Ducks’ front office throughout training camp, with the Zeev Buium contract in Vancouver serving as the primary market benchmark for both sides in the conversation. The divide between them is not characterized as fundamental. It is characterized as tangible.
The Anaheim salary structure provides Verbeek space that most GMs negotiating young-star extensions lack. The roster is not constructed around aging veterans with substantial contracts consuming the cap ceiling. The flexibility exists. The commitment needed to sign McTavish to a figure matching his production does not demand trading assets or creating room. It demands deciding that the figure is appropriate.
The question no one outside that room can resolve is whether Verbeek has made that decision.
The information imbalance is the element that renders deadline negotiations uneasy. McTavish knows what he produced. Verbeek knows the organizational blueprint and how McTavish fits into it at every age from twenty-three to thirty-one. Neither side knows precisely how the other is interpreting the clock. A deadline that both parties treat as a flexible target is not truly a deadline. A deadline that one party treats seriously and the other does not is where negotiations become costly quickly.
The situation in Detroit with Simon Edvinsson demonstrated what organizational uncertainty does to a negotiation when a hard deadline is involved. Detroit arrived at this week without a permanent general manager. Anaheim is not in that position. Verbeek is present, holds full authority, and has shown across four years that he is prepared to make substantial, long-term commitments when he believes the player across the table is foundational.
The question is whether McTavish at twenty-three is the player Verbeek commits to an eight-year deal at this figure. Every indicator says yes. The figure on the contract says it hinges on the next forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours is sufficient time to execute a contract. It is not sufficient to reconstruct a negotiating position if the divide is fundamental. What no one outside that room knows is whether these two sides are near agreement, and neither has offered any public indication that alters that.
The window closes at midnight Monday.
