August 13, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

The St. Louis Blues announced that they signed Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway to offer sheets on Tuesday. Broberg’s offer sheet has a value of $4,580,917 for two years, and Holloway’s offer sheet has a value of $2,290,457 for two years.

We have tendered offer sheets to Edmonton's Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway. #stlblues

DETAILS ➡️ https://t.co/HgShyE72bU https://t.co/HgShyE72bU

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) August 13, 2024

Remember how I said that I wouldn’t really evaluate the work of new Edmonton Oilers General Manager Stan Bowman until the 2025-26 season when his job was supposed to get more challenging? Well, his job just got a lot more challenging. The Oilers have a real quandary on their hands here as a result of these offer sheets.

Related: Bowman’s task with the Oilers

This is how offer sheets work in case you’re unfamiliar with the process. A team can offer a contract to another team’s restricted free agents. If the player chooses to sign the offer sheet, then the team who currently holds the player’s rights has one week to match the offer. If the team chooses not to match the offer, then the player goes to the team that signed the player to the offer sheet. The team that currently holds the player’s rights receives compensation for the lost player in the form of draft picks. The value of the draft pick or picks changes depending on the dollar value of the offer sheet. The Oilers would receive a second round pick for Broberg and a third round pick for Holloway if they were to not match the offers.

These are the 38th and 39th offer sheets ever to be signed in the NHL according to Sportsnet. Jesperi Kotkaniemi was the last player to sign one in a deal that brought him to the Carolina Hurricanes from the Montreal Canadiens in 2021. The Canadiens signed Hurricanes star Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet in 2019, but the Hurricanes matched the offer. Revenge may have played a factor in the Kotkaniemi deal. We have to go back to 1991 to find the last time a team signed two players from the same team to offer sheets in the same summer. The Boston Bruins signed Glen Featherstone and Dave Tomlinson to offer sheets. Ironically, it was the Blues who let Featherstone and Tomlinson walk away in 1991.

Offer sheets are rare in the NHL, but a move like this where a team signs two players to an offer sheet on the same day is incredibly rare. It’s a stressful situation for the Oilers and their fans, but the Blues have added some sizzle to the hot and slow days of August.

Broberg and Holloway both had stellar showings in the 2024 playoffs. Broberg wasn’t inserted in the lineup until Game 4 of the Western Conference Final, but he never came out of the lineup after that. He contributed two goals and an assist in ten playoff games for the Oilers in 2024. More importantly, he was only on the ice for two goals against at five-on-five in those ten games. He was rewarded with second pairing duty alongside Darnell Nurse.

Holloway was called up from the Bakersfield Condors with six games left in the regular season in 2023-24. He got five points in those six games and earned a spot on the playoff roster. Holloway played in all 25 of the Oilers’ playoff games in 2024, and he amassed five goals and seven points in those playoff games. Holloway played on the second line with Leon Draisaitl at times during the postseason.

Broberg and Holloway were former Oilers GM Ken Holland’s first two first round picks. They are also the only two of Holland’s picks in his five years at the helm that have even sniffed a full-time roster spot. Raphael Lavoie is the only other one of Holland’s picks to have even played a game with the Oilers at this point. Matej Blumel has played six NHL games, but those have been played with the Dallas Stars. That’s just a long winded way for me to say that the Oilers have precious little in terms of young NHL ready players, and they won’t have many for the next few years.

The Oilers don’t have a lot of cap space. The offer sheets for Broberg and Holloway have put some pressure on Bowman and the Oilers. PuckPedia has the Oilers at $7,225,541 over the league’s $88 million salary cap if you include the Broberg and Holloway offer sheets. They were $313,041 over the cap before these offer sheets were signed, so that is how far over the cap they would be if they were to let Broberg and Holloway walk away.

That $7,225,541 figure includes an active roster of 23 players composed of thirteen forwards, eight defencemen, and two goalies. 23 is the maximum number of players that a team can have on their active roster, but they can also carry fewer than that like the Oilers did last season.

Bob Stauffer reported that Evander Kane is likely to start the season on the LTIR because he may require surgery to address his sports hernia injury from last season. That would leave the Oilers at twelve forwards. That would raise the Oilers’ salary cap limit from $88 million to $93,125,000. They would then need to remove at least $2,100,541 to become cap compliant to start the season.

The Oilers could choose to only carry the six defencemen that played in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final this past June, which would mean burying Josh Brown and Troy Stecher in Bakersfield. That would remove $1,787,500 from the team’s cap hit. The Oilers would still need to move $313,041 out to become cap compliant in that scenario (yes, the same $313,041 overage that the Oilers ended the day with on Monday… math is fun sometimes), which would mean playing shorthanded or trading a player away to make the math work.

Basically, what I’m saying is that no matter what Bowman decides to do with Broberg and Holloway, the Oilers will have to sacrifice at least one player within the next seven days. 

Offer sheets are pointless unless they make the other team think, and that’s exactly what the Blues have done here. A second round pick and a third round pick is a weak return for two former first rounders that are on the brink of breaking out. The average annual values that the Blues gave to Broberg and Holloway are massive overpayments for what they have shown in the NHL thus far, but you basically have to overpay to make the other team even think about not matching an offer sheet. 

This is Bowman’s first test as GM of the Oilers. Oil Country will wait with bated breath for Bowman’s decision.

Related: Philip Broberg emerging as important piece for Oilers