ANAHEIM — The Ducks agreed to a three-year contract extension worth $18 million with winger Frank Vatrano, the team and player announced on Sunday morning.

The deal, as confirmed by general manager Pat Verbeek, included $9 million in payouts during the pact’s duration — between the 2025-26 and 2027-28 seasons — and another $9 million in deferred payments over a decade, beginning in 2035. The arrangement eases Vatrano’s cap hit from $6 million to $4.57 million in a hard-capped league and gives Vatrano options to save on state income taxes down the line, as first reported by TSN’s Pierre LeBrun. It’s a first-of-its-kind agreement in the NHL.

Vatrano, who will turn 31 in March, signed as a free agent with the Ducks entering the 2022-23 season after playing for the Boston Bruins, who signed him as an undrafted free agent out of UMass-Amherst, as well as the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers.

He enjoyed a breakout season last year. He was 30 when he hit the 30-goal mark for the first time, leading the Ducks in game-winning goals (7), power-play goals (13), overall goals (37) and points (60) in his first All-Star campaign.

“I see how bright our future is and we are making turns in the right direction to ultimately bring a Stanley Cup to Anaheim,” Vatrano said in a statement. “I couldn’t be happier to sign a three-year extension, and I am excited to help this team grow and be a big part of our future.”

At last season’s trade deadline, rumors swirled that Vatrano might be available. ESPN’s Emily Kaplan reported there were serious discussions about sending him back to the Rangers. Verbeek said after the deadline that no move was imminent and that he valued Vatrano. On Sunday, he put the Ducks’ checkbook behind his statements.

“Frank is an important member of our team and is committed to the organization moving forward,” Verbeek said in a statement. “He is a hard-nosed, competitive player with a gift for scoring goals. We couldn’t be happier for Frank to sign for three more years.”

Much like last month’s acquisition of Jacob Trouba, Vatrano’s relative permanence signaled that the Ducks would soon “be a cap team,” Verbeek said.

As Ryan Strome said after the Trouba deal, Ducks players have been longing for a firm indicator that the cycle of selling off expiring contracts for futures was coming to an end, and now it has seen at least two such signs.

Verbeek said that the Ducks, Vatrano and his agent, Peter Fish, had been in contact since the summer, and that a novel concept for a contract that the Ducks have been working on for even longer — one spun off of a higher-profile Southern California athlete’s contract — eventually presented itself as a viable approach.

“The inspiration probably came from (Shohei) Ohtani’s deal,” said Verbeek, adding that it was initially assistant GM Jeff Solomon’s idea. “We’ve been looking at this for a little more than a year. It was trying to find the right person and the right situation where it could present itself.”

The Carolina Hurricanes and another recent arrival to the NHL’s GM ranks, Eric Tulsky, signed deals with deferred signing bonuses, first for Jaccob Slavin and, more noticeably, for Seth Jarvis. So did Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treveling with Jake McCabe, who deferred around $5.5 million in bonus money. Those franchises followed the example of the now-defunct Arizona Coyotes with longtime captain Shane Doan. But no arrangement deferred actual salary, nor over nearly as many years.

“We had a different scenario, how we wanted to set it up,” Verbeek said.

Verbeek said ownership was “very open” to the novel tactic, and that it then became a matter of selling Vatrano on the benefits of deferring his income in terms of his family’s longtime security — Vatrano has two daughters under 2 — and also the tax implications of potentially earning the deferred income in a locale with less cumbersome state income tax rates.

For the Ducks, they get nearly $1.5 million in cap savings to help round out a roster that’s on pace to improve by more than 20 points in the standings this season.

“All I wanted all the time was to be a Duck, it didn’t matter what money I was making,” Vatrano said. “I wanted to play here and I didn’t want to play anywhere else.”