The St. Louis Blues have thrown a huge monkey wrench into the plans of the Edmonton Oilers.
As per the related press release by the Blues:
- ST. LOUIS – St. Louis Blues President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Doug Armstrong announced today that the Blues have tendered offer sheets to Edmonton Oilers defenseman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway.
The Oilers have seven days to exercise their right of first refusal on each of the players, per section 10.3 of the NHL collective bargaining agreement.
The Blues will have no further comment until the Oilers have made their decision as to whether to match the terms of either offer or accept the commensurate compensation.
Jason Gregor of Sports 1440 provides the financial details of the offers:
Two carefully-tailored offers, each for two years, designed in such a way as to maximize the cap hit of the two players while keeping each just below a specific threshold for compensation. Note how the one value is exactly double the other, a dead giveaway as to their (sub-)threshold values.
A second and a third round pick seems mighty light compensation for a pair in whom the Oilers invested first round picks not to mention years of development, but those are the rule. Just like that, a pair of progressing young players that many hoped would receive extensions in the range of $1 million per year. Now the pair will cost closer to $7 million to retain.
It’s a huge problem for a squad whose projected roster was already right at the cap before signing either player. Simply put, there isn’t available cap space in the budget to get it done… and the Oilers have seven days to figure it out.
It’s a shocking development in a little-used area of the CBA. Consider, there have been just two successful offer sheets in the salary cap era: Dustin Penner by the Oilers in 2007, and Jesperi Kotkaniemi by the Carolina Hurricanes in 2021. Now the Oilers find themselves facing two such offers on a single day.
The concept of a double offer sheet has been around for some time in theory, though not in practice. Closest it ever came to fruitiion was in 2010, when San Jose Sharks made a four-year, $14 million offer to emerging Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Niklas Hjalmarsson; the Blackhawks matched it, but then had insufficent cap space to accept an arbitration ruling for goaltender Antti Niemi, who subsequently signed with, you guessed it, San Jose.
More to come.