Offer sheets are designed to put the squeeze on salary-capped teams and on Tuesday the Edmonton Oilers woke up to the St. Louis Blues putting their hands around their throat with not one but two rogue moves on Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway.
We’re not sure if new Oiler GM Stan Bowman will be challenging his Blues lodge brother Doug Armstrong to a fight in the barn of his choice but this stings because the defenceman Broberg and the left-winger Holloway are both young and made good contributions to the team reaching the Stanley Cup final against Florida. Bowman doesn’t seem to be as fiery as then Anaheim GM Brian Burke who, as we all know, was furious with Oiler manager Kevin Lowe in 2007 when Lowe went after top 6 winger Dustin Penner with a five-year $21.5m offer sheet that wasn’t matched by the Ducks. In hindsight, it wasn’t worth the effort or aggravation because then Oiler coach Craig MacTavish was often apoplectic about Penner’s effort and they wound up trading him to LA for Colten Teubert, a third-round pick and a first-rounder they turned into Oscar Klefbom.
Now, the Oilers have double the trouble after the Blues, with $7.5 million in cap space, and with defenceman Torey Krug’s NHL career in serious jeopardy with arthritis in his left ankle, went after Broberg and Holloway, who looks like a top 9 NHL winger.
The two-year offer sheet AAV for Broberg is $4,580,917 and the same two years at $2,290,457 for Holloway, both offers to the decimal point so the compensation to the Oilers is a second-round pick for the defenceman and a third for the winger, if the team chooses not to match the Blues’ offer.
The Oilers, who have a week to match or not, will have to do some fancy stepping to keep both players. They were $341,000 over the $85m cap before the offer sheets to Broberg and Holloway. Now it’s over $7.21 million, so assistant GM Bill Scott, the team’s cap guy, has his hands full. They can put winger Evander Kane on LTIR with his sports hernia maybe, moving his $5.5m AAV there, for now, but you would think a doctor would have to say surgery is required. And Kane would have to sign off on that surgery. Plus, there’s no guarantee Kane would be gone for the season if he needs a procedure to fix the sports hernia.
When recovered, his cap hit goes back on the regular roster.
Trade talk
A trade of defenceman Cody Ceci ($3.5 million for one more year) or his third-pairing partner Brett Kulak ($2.75 million for two seasons) would seem the only way to go to make the math work, as well, to get around the offer sheets.
The Oilers were probably offering in the $1.1-$1.3 m AAV range to the restricted free agents Broberg and Holloway on two-year deals, about what you should pay to a defenceman with 81 NHL regular-season games and a winger with 89, with cap problems. Even if both are former first-round picks—Broberg eighth in 2019, Holloway 14th in 2020.
Now? That’s thrown out the window.
“I think Broberg can be a top 3 NHL defenceman,” said a long-time NHL team executive, “and I see Holloway as a 7-8 forward.”
Broberg was Darnell Nurse’s defence partner in the final. Holloway may be looked at a LW on a third Oiler line with Adam Henrique and Connor Brown at camp.
So what would you do if you’re Bowman?
Broberg’s ceiling is higher.
But fiscally, you probably walk on Broberg, and match on Holloway.
Big money on blue line
Here’s the sober facts. The Oilers are already paying Nurse $9.25 million this upcoming season, Mattias Ekholm $6 million and Evan Bouchard $3.9 million. If they match on Broberg, who looks like a top 4 D off the playoffs, but is no sure thing, that is another $4.58 million That is $23.7 million for those four, and Bouchard is in line for a raise to $9 million to $10 million in a new deal after this season if he again is a point-a-game D-man.
They could trade Ceci’s $3.25m but might have to attach a sweetener to do that.
In theory, they have enough NHL calibre defencemen to take Broberg’s place with Troy Stecher and Josh Brown signed as free agents but the Oilers have put five years into Broberg and finally he looks like he’s ready to hit as an NHLer.
To lose him would be a kick in the head with construction boots.
Now, the Oilers could look for a UFA rental D at the trade deadline next year to fill out the defence if Broberg walks, as they did with Stecher this past season, but Broberg played 14 ½ minutes in the biggest game, Game 7 in Florida.
In theory, young defencemen are more valuable to a roster than young wingers, but Broberg is not a $4.5-million blueliner right now. Holloway is pencilled in to replace Warren Foegele who signed a three-year free-agent deal in Los Angeles in July. Plus, the Oilers see his speed as being a complement to Henrique and Brown, with Mattias Janmark, their ace penalty-killer, maybe fitting better on the fourth line.
Question of prospects
There are no young D in Bakersfield ready to come up and take Broberg’s spot. Matt Savoie, acquired from Buffalo in the Ryan McLeod trade, could maybe fill Holloway’s NHL roster spot on the wing for now. But the Oilers, in win-now mode, aren’t deep in organizational prospects.
The Blues, who made a trade Tuesday to get a second-round draft pick from Pittsburgh to have the compensation necessary for Broberg if the Oilers don’t match, missed the playoffs this past season. They’re a longshot to make the post-season this year and are rebuilding or retooling.
Offer sheets sometimes lead to retribution like when Montreal went after No. 1 centre Sebastian Aho and Carolina matched, then the Hurricanes made a later rogue offer on forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi, which the Habs walked away from.
There would be nothing to stop the Oilers from offer-sheeting say, Blues’ winger Jake Neighbours next summer if St. Louis doesn’t resign the restricted free-agent former Oil Kings forward over this upcoming season. Neighbours, who has one year left on his contract, had 27 goals this past season. He is captaincy material down the road.
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