On yesterday’s episode of Canucks Conversation, David Quadrelli and Harman Dayal were joined by Tyler Yaremchuk of OilersNation to discuss the offer sheet situation Edmonton has found themselves in.
The St. Louis Blues presented offer sheets to Philip Broberg (2 years at $4,580,917) and Dylan Holloway (2 years at $2,290,457). If Edmonton doesn’t match the offer sheets, the compensation due would be a second-round pick for Broberg and a third-round pick for Holloway. Edmonton has seven days to match the offers before St. Louis claims both players.
“I love the chaos and drama that comes with offer sheets,” Harm said. “All 31 other fanbases, aside from Oilers fans, love these storylines, especially in the middle of August. Seven hours before this happened, we got news that the Blues had re-acquired their own second-round pick from the Penguins, because with offer sheets, you can only use your own draft picks. It was clearly a series of dominoes falling into place. I think this is intelligently structured by the Blues. With offer sheets, the mistake people make is focusing on star or franchise players. But as we saw with Carolina back in the day matching the Sebastian Aho offer, you’re just not going to be able to pry a franchise-quality player away. The middle ground where you can actually get a player is with talented young players on cap-strapped contenders.”
“It’s tough. Dylan Holloway is the more proven player; he’s played more games in the NHL and has had more success at the NHL level,” Tyler began. “Philip Broberg is playing the more important position, but now he’s on the worse contract of the two. Everyone likes to pencil in Broberg as a top-4 defenseman, and it’s a massive risk. He did it for 10 games in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and outside of that, we’ve never even seen him flourish as a third-pairing defenseman, let alone as a second-pair guy playing on his off-side, which is what the Oilers might need him to do. The better, more proven player is Holloway. Broberg plays the position of greater need. If you look at it in a vacuum, you keep the guy who plays the more important position and whose upside could be more significant for you in Broberg. But then you look at his contract: $4.5 million for two years. It’s not just that. Signing him to that deal means that by year three, he’s going to have to be a $5 million defenseman, or we’ll have to let him walk. There are so many wrinkles that make this so, so complicated. The other argument I’ve seen is that if you have Cody Ceci at $3.25 million, you’d much rather have Broberg at $4.5 million. My counterargument is that just because one guy’s contract sucks doesn’t mean you should sign up for another one.”
“I don’t think it’s a personal feud between the two sides. It’s just St. Louis seeing a good chance to get one or maybe two good, young players and, asset-wise, pay under-market value,” Tyler continued. “With the Torey Krug situation, they have the LTIR space, so why not take a swing at it?”
The last time we saw offer sheets being thrown around was, as Harman mentioned earlier, when Montreal extended an offer sheet to Carolina’s Sebastian Aho. The Hurricanes matched it to keep their franchise center and returned the following year with a hefty $6.1 million offer sheet to the Canadiens’ former third overall pick, Jesperi Kotkaniemi. Montreal opted for the first- and third-round picks as compensation rather than match the offer.
Tyler suggested a potential target should the Oilers feel like taking a run at one of the Blues’ players next year.
“The one obvious punch would be next summer, when he’s eligible, Jake Neighbours,” said Tyler. “He played his junior hockey in Edmonton; he’s an Alberta boy and was the captain of the Edmonton Oil Kings. On July 1st next year, you hammer Neighbours with an offer sheet. But, when Carolina went down that path with the retribution, you could argue it didn’t work out all that well for them. They ended up with a pretty expensive Jesperi Kotkaniemi. He’s a fine player in my books, but now he’s signed to that long deal. I don’t know if it was worth all the effort. It takes a very unique circumstance for this to work: a cap-strapped team with two young players who you can pit against each other within the organization, and you yourself have to have the assets and more cap space than the other team to make an offer that makes them squirm. I don’t think the Oilers will turn this into an offer sheet back-and-forth. The best retribution is to shrug and say, ‘Teams are scared of us; they’re trying to take us down, and we’re going to let our play on the ice next year speak for itself.’”
You can watch the full replay of the episode below:
Sponsored by bet365
