On Tuesday morning, St. Louis threw the first punch.

Because the news of the Blues’ offer sheet to Edmonton Oilers restricted free agents Dylan Holloway and Filip Broberg came out shortly before 8 AM Mountain Time, there is a very realistic possibility that multiple Oilers front office personnel were drinking their morning coffee when they learned that their offseason just got a whole lot more complicated.

If you’re a Vancouver Canucks fan, the Oilers’ offseason becoming more complicated is certainly a good thing.

The 2024 Stanley Cup Final participants now have to navigate whether or not they will match one or both of Broberg or Holloway’s contract, or if they will let both players walk. That doesn’t seem like a reality for the Oilers, who obviously like both players.

We broke down on Tuesday how the Oilers should handle the situation, but that’s just one of the Oilers’ options. While on paper, Holloway’s proposed contract of two years at $2.29 million annually looks better than Broberg’s — two years at at $4.58 million — losing Broberg would make an already weakened Oilers blue line even weaker.

So yes, the Oilers have a decision to make, and they have one week to make it. But this article isn’t about the Oilers’ decision. Instead, it’s about what might come next in this new drama between these two teams.

Offer sheets are used so rarely in the NHL that many general managers and front offices take it as a personal attack. And what do you do when someone attacks you? You either fight back or turn the other cheek.

The most obvious answer for the Oilers to “fight back” would appear to be extending an offer sheet to Blues RFA Jake Neighbours. The 22-year-old Alberta-born forward scored 27 goals in 77 games this past season and won’t turn 23 until March 2025. Unfortunately, a repeat or better season from the goal-scoring winger would likely put him in the territory of RFAs where the Blues would just match the offer sheet and happily take Neighbours on the contract he agreed to sign in Edmonton.

An example of this phenomenon — right down to the fighting back with a petty offer sheet of your own — is the saga between the Carolina Hurricanes and Montreal Canadiens a few years back.

The first punch in that scenario came from the Habs, who offer sheeted Sebastian Aho at 5 years, $8.46 million annually. As the Hurricanes’ best player and only coming off his ELC, Carolina didn’t hesitate to match the offer sheet and sign Aho to that contract. But they clearly didn’t forget the role the Habs played, as when Montreal was getting set to work with RFA Jesperi Kotkaniemi on a new deal the next offseason, the Hurricanes struck with an offer sheet of their own, swooping in and taking the young centre away from the Habs.

But it didn’t really work out all that well, as Kotkaniemi is essentially a third line centre who just put up 12 goals and 15 assists through 79 games this past season.

Which is why Edmonton might instead decide it’s best to just end this saga by turning the other cheek.

The Oilers can decide to take the draft picks on Holloway and/or Broberg, sign one or both players, and that can be the end of it. They can choose to end this “saga” by not really making it a saga at all.

Instead, we could be left with trying to see the petty ways that the Oilers mess with the Blues in the coming years. It might not be through a revenge offer sheet, but don’t expect the Oilers to help out the Blues in any way in the coming years.

This new Blues-Oilers front office rivalry dates all the way back to when Bowman’s Chicago Blackhawks were bitter Central Division rivals with Armstrong’s Blues, and everyone loves a good rivalry, right?

What do you think? Will the drama simply end when the Oilers make their decision on these RFAs or will we see a revenge offer sheet to Neighbours next year? Let us know in the comments section below!