As their seven-day grace period inexorably winds down, the Edmonton Oilers brain trust faces a whole lot of questions about the predatory dual offer sheets made by St. Louis Blues to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway
Foremost among them are these two diametrically-opposed queries:
- Can the Oilers afford to match the offers ?
- Can the Oilers afford not to match the offers?
Alas, the word “afford” applies to very different aspects of the business. The first question is about the payroll, specifically the salary cap whose limits the Oilers were already exceeding before the dual offers, which total very nearly $7 million for each of the next two seasons. The second, to the team on the ice. What attributes do these players bring that would not be easily replaced?
Let’s answer that last question first: youth, and speed. In a perfect world those words would also be paired with “cost-controlled”, alas that has suddenly disappeared in a puff of Blue smoke. The pair whose reported asking price (as per Elliotte Friedman’s 32 Thoughtspodcast) was $1.8 and $1.2 million respectively have a whopping new price tag of well more than double that with zero room to negotiate. The new terms are “take it or leave it”.
Not that the Oilers’ propensity for dragging RFAs into the summer months is particularly out of line with the norm. Check out this Puckpedialist of young talent currently “between contracts”:
Listed in order of points scored in 2023-24. Only one mismatched sock there in the person of former Oiler Kailer Yamamoto, now 25 and already the recipient of a big-dollar contract. The rest are youngsters, primarily 22 or 23 year olds, with Holloway and Broberg right in that group.
Be that as it may, the Oilers are the ones to have been targeted, and doubly so, as a club with two such players which is already in cap jail and little room to manoeuvre. Just like that, “business as usual” has morphed to “five alarm emergency”.
Throughout this summer I’ve been projecting a 23-man roster, based on the 23 players who suited up for the Oilers in the playoffs minus four who have been offloaded plus four who were signed on Jul 01. All 27 are listed here, from youngest to oldest, with departed players slotted in for information purposes only.
Hey lookit! Holloway and Broberg are the two youngest guys on the team! And by some distance.
It’s an aging group. The Oilers were already ranked the second-oldest team in the NHL after the trade deadline last season, one of just two clubs above 30 years of age on average. Not only will the rank and file be one year older in 2024-25, but the offseason changes have been in the direction of even more experience. Gone are Ryan McLeod, 25; Warren Foegele, 28; Vincent Desharnais 28; Sam Carrick, 32. In their place, four more veterans of 30+ (I’ve included Troy Stecher in this group since he didn’t appear in the playoffs).
For all players I’ve shown their age at the end of this calendar year, roughly midseason. The full list of 23 current Oilers including the offer-sheeted duo averages 30.5 years of age, a high figure. Take away the two young bucks, the remaining 21-man group soars to 31.2.
Indeed, beyond the two young men who have just committed to another NHL team, the youngest Oiler is Evan Bouchard who will turn 25 in the first month of the season. Not ominous at all when your projected youngest player bears the nickname “Old Man”. Next youngest skaters are Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse, all of them at least ten-year veterans. Everybody else? Already 30 or older. Nurse will join that large club in early February.
When it comes to team speed, the departed McLeod and Foegele were among the fastest Oilers, whereas nobody among the newcomers really identifies as a burner. McDavid remains, of course, and his extraordinary speed will be a weapon for years to come. But with the swift-skating McLeod having moved on, who else among the forwards brings “plus” speed? Dylan Holloway, for one.
Meanwhile, on the back end, both Nurse and Brett Kulak are strong skaters, but it may well be Philip Broberg who ranks #1 in the mobility department, or at least trending in that direction.
The loss of either or both would be a serious hit on a squad already trending towards too old / too slow.
Salary cap considerations
Let’s return to the table. Were the Oilers simply to match the offers of both, the 23-man roster as shown along with some $6.5 million in dead cap would command a combined AAV of $95.226 million, some $7.2 million over the limit. Is there any way to make it fit?
The short answer is “yes”, though by starting the season with a 20-man roster. The first step is already apparent, namely the placement of Evander Kane on Long Term Injured Reserve, broadly discussed even before the recent developments and coming into clearer focus in the past couple of days. That move would clear $5.125 million in cap space for as long as Kane remains on LTIR, even as the other shoe will drop hard if that occurs any time during the upcoming regular season.
That leaves the club with 22 active players and $2.1 million over cap. Barring other injuries or trades, it’s not likely that excess could be covered off by a single player being sent out. It is possible, however, to waive two players on the eve of the season to barely make the limit. Ideally, players who are not likely to get claimed off the waiver wire. The two most obvious candidates to these eyes are Corey Perry and Josh Brown.
I’ve highlighted the cap hits of Kane, Perry and Brown with a yellow background in the chart above. Subtract them out, and the cap reduction is $7.275 million, leaving a 20-man roster with a combined salary of $87.951 million. That would double as the upper limit for the entire season given the invocation of season-opening LTIR status which at this point seems unavoidable.
Far from ideal, obviously. A 20-man roster leaves no margin for error, or absence. Every time a player was unavailable due to injury or illness, the Oilers would have to play a man short for a game before being allowed an emergency call-up.
A trade could ease the pressure somewhat, though in truth there are only two realistic candidates without trade protection carrying sufficient cap hits to move the needle, namely d-men Kulak and Cody Ceci. To this observer both men have enough value that a trade scenario is realistic, though would leave a hole. (A subject for another post, perhaps.)
While the current roster model projects all three of Broberg, Ceci and Kulak as top-six defenders, the Swede’s new price tag may make that untenable, potentially pushing the likes of J.Brown and/or Stecher into regular duty.
The other option, of course, is simply to move on from Broberg and stick with the three veteran left defenders that have been blocking his progress the last season and a half, all of whom are locked up for at least two more years at a combined AAV of $18 million.
Another option would be to let Holloway walk, which would in a stroke cover off the cap savings that might be provided by the dual waiver of Perry and J.Brown. That at least would allow a 21st roster player, even as the collective group would be both older and slower.
All in all, a dastardly situation. There are realistic arguments to be made to match the offer on both youngsters, or one (but which one?), or neither.
For what it’s worth, my own opinion values the youth and speed of the players in question, a team need exacerbated by a prospect pipeline that currently sports precious few NHL-ready hopefuls. But at a combined $7 million, they are suddenly far from the “cost-controlled” youngsters envisioned by the model.
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