There are lots of fingers being pointed as the Edmonton Oilers try to decide whether they have the financial pathway to match the two-year offer sheets for defenceman Philip Broberg or winger Dylan Holloway, both or neither, by next Tuesday morning.
They were very vulnerable and St. Louis Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong did talk about offer sheets in general terms with The Athletic’s Jeremy Rutherford just after free agency opened, saying, “There’s a perception that offer sheets are taboo by managers, but offer sheets that don’t work are taboo by managers… That’s the assessment we all make.”
But two offer sheets on the same team? Who thought that was possible?
With the deadline to match or walk away by the Oilers on 23-year-old Broberg and 22-year-old Holloway, the difference in the dollars is as clear as how they play. They have to match $4.58 million for the quieter shutdown type D Broberg and $2.29 million for the fast, aggressive, Holloway — one or both.
If they walk away from Broberg, it’s a second-round draft pick in 2025 (not enough for the eighth player taken overall in 2019); if Holloway, it’s a third-rounder next June for the 14th player chosen in 2020.
Young D are more valuable than young LW, unless they are scorers in a perfect hockey world, and the Oilers’ pool of early 20s NHLers is wading-pool shallow, so they don’t want to lose either, but…
I wouldn’t bet $1,000 that the Oilers walk away from Broberg because his $4.58 million is a big gulp (I’m not that sure), but I would go $100 that they let the Blues have him at that sticker price because while young, he wouldn’t be cheap labour any longer on a win-now, older Oiler roster. The betting is they keep Holloway because it’s a cleaner thing to do.
It means they don’t have to trade one of their veteran D, either Cody Ceci (one year left at $3.25 million) or Brett Kulak (two years at $2.75 million), maybe with sweeteners because the other NHL teams know the Oilers are dealing from a position of weakness, and they (a) move 500-game NHLer Troy Stecher into the top six or (b) sign another veteran UFA on the market like former Oilers Tyson Barrie or Justin Schultz for cheap money.
If they match on the left-shot Broberg, who has played left and right side D, his salary will be $700,000 more this upcoming season than they are paying their best D Evan Bouchard, before Bouchard hits a massive homerun next summer if he’s again a point-a-game player. The optics of that aren’t great, having a player with 81 NHL games and off 10 in the playoffs this past May and June, making more than a 23-minute game Bouchard.
And, as we know, they’re trying to sign Leon Draisaitl for 2025-26 and onward, along with Bouchard, with Connor McDavid coming up in 2026-27 — so do they also want Broberg at about $4.6 million in 2025-26 if they don’t yet know how good he is?
True, the Oilers’ game plan before the offer sheets was to see if Broberg’s playoff work was an indicator he can definitely play in the top-four minutes now, either with Darnell Nurse or maybe there’s a shuffle and the two Swedes Mattias Ekholm and Broberg get a test drive and Bouchard plays with Nurse.
But, really, does anybody know for sure what Broberg is or will be?
He’s a wonderful skater who can skate the puck out of trouble — that’s what he does best. He hasn’t shown an affinity for offence at the NHL level (in Bakersfield, different story).
Could Broberg be as good as the left-shot but right-side Jonas Brodin in Minnesota? Maybe, but if we’re asking today, we’re still talking potential.
True, the Oilers have no young defencemen in the AHL pipeline ready now to be NHLers if they let Broberg leave. Their best shutdown type might be Max Wanner, but he’s a couple of years away. Also true that the estimable Ekholm is now 34 and has just two years left on his contract. But, there’s that $4.6 million to match on Broberg, which is way more than he should be making at this time and with the cap issues.
We know what Holloway is. He is a top-nine LW, like Warren Foegele was a top-nine winger. We know they’ve lost Foegele’s speed to rival Los Angeles Kings, unable to resign him because of the cap squeeze. They traded C/winger Ryan McLeod, one of the NHL’s fastest players, to Buffalo for Matt Savoie. They need to keep Holloway’s foot speed in the lineup, somewhere, even if he could only be the third-line LW this season with UFA signee Jeff Skinner in the picture now as a top-six guy and Mattias Janmark may be sliding back to the fourth line.
The Oilers aren’t sending out any signals on Broberg vs. Holloway, but it seems inconceivable they will match on both when they are already over the cap by $341,000 and the offer sheets (two years on both) add up to $6.9 million more on this year’s cap. They would gain some breathing room if they put Evander Kane and his $5.1 million cap hit on LTIR should he need surgery on his sports hernia. But if they go that route on Kane, what if he’s ready to play in February? Then that $5.1 million hit goes back on the regular cap.
The Oilers have made mistakes with how they’ve brought Broberg along. At times, he was dressing as a seventh D, with former coach Jay Woodcroft liking the 11-and-seven model. He has looked too good for the AHL, but for most of this past NHL season, the Oilers felt Vinny Desharnais was better in the top-six rotation — big body, excellent penalty killer, aggressive.
He sat until they sent him back to Bakersfield.
Broberg has been unhappy for some time about his usage here and did ask for a trade during the season. The Oilers’ offer to him was going to be about 30 per cent of what the Blues’ offer sheet was, so he had no trouble signing it even if the Oilers are a lot closer to being a Stanley Cup winner than the retooling Blues are at this point.
The Blues already have nine defencemen on one-way contracts, and Broberg would make it an imperfect 10, but a quick look at their depth chart would seem to indicate Broberg could replace the oft-injured, equally young Scott Perunovich in the second D pair on the left side with righty Justin Faulk as a partner.
“If we come back with the same (defence) group, it’s the same group. Our right side is pretty well connected with (Colton) Parayko, Faulk and (Matthew) Kessel. We’re focusing on the left side,” Armstrong said weeks ago.
“If you look at the left-shot D that have signed (free-agency), it wasn’t a huge market in that area. You look at other ways to improve your team.”
The Blues, who have $7.3 million in cap space with the possibility of adding Torey Krug (arthritic left ankle) on long-term injury status for even more cap room, have 14 forwards on one-way deals. Yet, there is easily a path whereby Holloway can fit in if the Oilers don’t match on him. He had five playoff goals, including two in Game 4 of the final against Florida.
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