Uh, oh. Taking advantage of the Edmonton Oilers squeezed salary cap, the St. Louis Blues have hit hard and made offer sheets on defenceman Philip Broberg and winger Dylan Holloway, two players who blossomed in the Oilers’ run to the Stanley Cup Final.
The offer sheet on Broberg, who was Darnell Nurse’s partner for part of the Dallas playoff series and all of the final against Florida, is two years at $4,580,917. The one on Holloway, who had five goals in the playoffs and established himself as a regular after a late-season call-up from Bakersfield is two years at $2,290,457.
Compensation is a third-round pick for Holloway and a second rounder for Broberg if Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson and new GM Stan Bowman can’t or won’t match the offer sheets from Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong.
The Oilers, over the cap ceiling of $85 million by $341,667, have a week to either match or take the weak compensation for their two of their best young players. The Blues, who missed the playoffs last season, worked on the offers to the final decimal point. An extra dollar AAV on one or both would have increased the compensation.
This is a major blow for the Oilers, clearly. Broberg and Holloway are former first-round draft picks.
They could possibly put winger Evander Kane (sports hernia issues) with his $5.5 million cap hit on long-term injury to get cap relief now to keep one of the players but not both unless they make other moves, likely with a trade.
Broberg figured to be given every shot to be a top 4 D in training camp. And Holloway may have slotted in on LW with Adam Henrique and Connor Brown on a third line if ace penalty killer Mattias Janmark would go back to the fourth.
The Oilers, of course, made a big offer sheet move on Anaheim Ducks in July, 2007 when they offered Dustin Penner five years at $21.5 million and the Ducks couldn’t afford it. Anaheim got a first, second and third-round draft pick in 2008, and we all know the anger Ducks then GM Brian Burke had for then Oilers counterpart Kevin Lowe.
In 1993, San Jose tried an offer sheet on Craig Simpson at three years for $3.09 million but it was invalidated because much of it was a signing bonus. The Oilers didn’t match a Blues offer sheet on Shayne Corson in 1995 and he went back to St. Louis in a trade for Curtis Joseph and Mike Grier.
At one time offer sheets were happening often but they are pretty are now.
The last NHL offer sheet was Carolina’s one-year offer of $6.1 million to Montreal’s Jesperi Kotkaniemi in 2021. The Habs said no thanks and got first and third-round picks in 2022. The Canes’ rogue offer was in retaliation to Montreal offer sheeting Sebastian Aho in 2019 that Carolina matched.
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