Once again the winding, intertwining path/s of Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway delivers the young hockeyists to Edmonton, Alberta, specifically Rogers Place. It’s a building both are intimately familiar with, having played across a variety of seasons and competitions wearing multiple team colours including their respective national teams and of course the Edmonton Oilers.
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Saturday night marks the first time both will wear enemy silks, specifically those of the St. Louis Blues. Expect an, uhhm, interesting reception for the “two-headed monster” some have taken to calling Dilip Brolloway.
Freshly turned 23, both have enjoyed a strong start in their new “forever home” after their time in Edmonton came to a shocking climax one week last August. More on that in a moment.
The duo first came to the collective attention of hockey fans in these parts way back in August of 2018, midway between their respective 17th birthdays. The occasion was the Hlinka-Gretzky Cup, the first version of the event to be held in Canada, with Edmonton and Red Deer sharing the hosting honours. Broberg was a strapping all-ice defenceman wearing Sweden’s Tre Kronor, Holloway a speedy forward sporting Canada’s red maple leaf. The two squads faced off in the feature game of the Edmonton group, then met again for all the marbles.
Lots of prospects on both teams, of course, all of them undrafted due to their tender age. It was, after all, a U-18 event. While both players had their moments in that tourney, they wouldn’t really claim the local spotlight until the next two NHL Drafts. The Oilers selected first Broberg, then Holloway with their first-round selections in 2019 and 2020; at #8 and #14 respectively, the two highest selections by Edmonton during the entire period 2017-24 and likely for years to come.
They had been born just 3 months apart in 2001, but their birthdays of Jun 25 (Broberg) and Sep 23 (Holloway) meant they straddled the draft cutoff date of Sep 15. In every other respect they were exact contemporaries… to the the peril of the Oilers as things turned out.
The two players again landed in Rogers Place at the end of 2020, this time as participants of the high-profile World Junior Hockey Championships, albeit the dreaded Bubble edition. By now both were strapping lads of 19, Broberg even serving as the captain of Sweden. By then they were the Oilers’ top two prospects and were the subject of much scrutiny. Unfortunately, the most accurate harbinger of their respective futures may have been that each got banged up and missed a game or two due to injury.
Those were COVID times so nothing unfolded in a truly orderly fashion, but both young men effectively turned pro in the fall of 2021 with brand spanking new Entry Level Contracts. Each would spend the next three seasons on a carousel between Edmonton, Bakersfield and injured reserve. Both had shining moments to display their promise, dampened by long periods of waiting their turn that never seemed to fully arrive.
For all of that promise, neither established himself as a full-time NHLer during the full span of those ELCs. Both were young enough that the dread word “tweener” seems a tad harsh, yet the striped colour pattern of their respective player pages at hockeydb.com reflected exactly that. Let’s start with Broberg:
The black box outlines the three-year period his ELC was in effect. Each of those years was split between the NHL (yellow) and AHL (pink), often with multiple moves during the season. At the end of last season Broberg had played 81 regular season games in the higher league and 87 in the lower.
Only in St. Louis do we see a (partial) season with only one line of data. He’s no longer waiver-exempt which is a big deal, but so is the fact that the Blues have no reason whatsoever to send him down. He’s an NHLer now after three years of apprenticeship in the Edmonton system.
PS: that newest line of data looks pretty darn good, even as he has missed a dozen games with yet another injury.
Similar story for Holloway, who also bounced back and forth between NHL (89 regular season games) and AHL (63). His NHL stay was short indeed in his first season (he debuted in the last playoff game vs. Colorado) in large part due to a scaphoid injury suffered in his college days which required two surgeries and essentially forced his assignment to Bakersfield. As with Broberg, other injuries hampered his progress every step of the way, or so it seemed.
Once again, three yellow lines and three pink ones during his time with the Oilers organization.
The NHL opportunity for both was further limited by a logjam of veteran players blocking their path, a deliberate strategy of then-GM Ken Holland who valued experienced players throughout his line-up. I detailed Broberg’s situation specifically in this post in the summer of 2023, fully 12 months before the offer sheet landed. The problem was a wall of left shot d-men in their prime, each signed for at least 3 more years at substantial cap hits totaling $18 million as per this chart from that article:
Where the heck was young Broberg supposed to fit? In the post I floated the idea of moving the youngster to the right side, most likely with Darnell Nurse in the top four, and indeed that’s what the Oilers did late in the playoffs. Broberg played the final ten games of the run on the second pairing, including the three wins that closed out the Dallas series and all seven games of the Stanley Cup Finals. But the way forward was still far from clear, other than the three vets ahead of him on the depth chart were going nowhere. They still haven’t. So it was Broberg himself who took the decision to go somewhere… else.
Holloway’s story was not quite so compartmentalized, in part due to his versatility to play any forward position. That included right wing, his off side, where he played a significant role on Leon Draisaitl‘s line as the playoffs went along. AS with Broberg it wasn’t so much a matter of best fit for the player, as it was plugging the player into a hole and hoping it turned out. Holloway comported himself well, playing all 25 playoff games and tallying 5 goals including a brace in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
But when Oilers interim GM Jeff Jackson went out on Jul 01 and immediately signed (projected) top-six wingers Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner, young Holloway had to be asking himself similar questions as Broberg. Where do I fit? Is it in Edmonton?
With both of those ELCs simultaneously expired, with little cap space to extend either, and with so many veterans blocking their path to a meaningful role, the door was left open for preemptive action by another NHL organization. Through that door stepped Doug Armstrong, GM of the Blues, with a deviously-constructed double offer sheet that paid each player handsomely enough that the Oilers were in very tough to match. Armstrong carefully waited until Aug 13, the day after the second buyout window closed, leaving Edmonton very little room to manoeuvre.
Offer sheets had become rare in recent years, successful ones almost nonexistent. Just twice in the 21st century had a player actually changed clubs by this means — Dustin Penner to Edmonton in 2007, and Jesperi Kotkaniemi to Carolina in 2021. But Doug Armstrong’s stunning raid of a vulnerable team doubled that number in a single stroke.
Not only were the Oilers cap-strapped for the immediately upcoming (now current) season, the two-year offers were also hugely problematic for 2025-26, when expected rich extensions for Draisaitl (since signed) and Evan Bouchard were set to come due. There was nowhere near $7 million in the budget for up-and-comers like Broberg and Holloway; the projected expenditure for the two of them was surely something under half of that figure.
Faced with that dilemma, the decision was taken to punt. New GM Stan Bowman made a pair of trades within an hour one Sunday night in mid-August — not a traditional trading window — to bring in young forward Vasily Podkolzin and young defender Ty Emberson, sending out expensive rearguard Cody Ceci in that latter deal. Both incomers were already signed to affordable extensions in the $1 million range, some $5 million less in total than the departing pair.
(Particularly interesting is the past history of Podkolzin, an exact contemporary of Brolloway and fellow first-round pick (#10 in 2019). He played in the same two age-group tournaments at Rogers Place, leading the 2018 Hlinka-Gretzky in scoring and then serving Russia as captain at the Bubble World Juniors 28 months later. As a pro he struggled through a trio of “striped seasons” from 2021-24 with the Vancouver Canucks and their AHL affiliate in Abbotsford before moving on to a fresh start himself.)
In that decisive hour the Oilers’ cap woes were essentially solved for 2024-25, but it sure did hurt. Two huge investments in terms of draft assets and development time not to mention size, speed and obvious talent, walked out the door to a Western Conference rival.
Where to this point both have thrived. As per the above player pages, Broberg has already scored 12 points in 15 games for St. Louis, nearly matching the 13 he recorded in 81 games over three partial seasons here. Similar for Holloway, whose 8-8-16 in 27 games is already a near match for the 9-9-18 he managed in 89 appearances over multiple years as an Oiler. Both are significant plus players after hovering a little below break even in Edmonton.
Both seemed ready to pop last spring when they thrived on the second unit in the biggest games of all. But the full opportunity each had earned became available only after that change of address.
The proof is in the pudding. Holloway has seen his ice time expand by fully 50%, from 10:21 per game as an Oiler to 15:31 as a Blue. He’s currently on the second line with proven NHLers Brayden Schenn and Jordan Kyrou. He’s taken a further major step forward since the Blues hired Jim Montgomery as their coach 5 games ago. Since then, points in every game totalling 4-4-8, +5 in 16:42 ATOI. Included in that, an overtime assist on Colton Parayko’s game winner in Calgary last game out, the sort of opportunity he wouldn’t likely get in Edmonton were he still an Oiler.
Similar holds for Broberg, even as he lost almost all of November to injury. His ice time has increased even more, from an average of 12:42 as an Oiler (a figure that actually diminished each season) to 20:39 in St. Louis. Under Montgomery, that figure has ballooned to 24:58 in the 3 games since his return to action (0-3-3, +1). He’s reportedly lining up with Parayko on the top pairing.
27 games does not a season make. Expect some regression to the mean for both players, who have been “riding the percentages” to this point. In particular, Broberg has enjoyed an on-ice save percentage of .971 at 5v5; that’s clearly unsustainable. His PDO of 1.044 ranks #1 on the Blues, Holloway’s 1.021 is #4.
Give the young men their due, they seized both the opportunity and the day. It was a perfect storm which their respective agents worked to their advantage for a princely sum. So far they’ve covered the bet.
But when they hit the familiar sheet at Rogers Place on Saturday night, I also suspect Oilers fans will give the young men their boo. Hell hath no fury like a hockey fan scorned.
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