Oilers cap recap after Sunday’s trades
August 20, 2024
Deep Dive: Bowman’s availabilty after declining the offer sheets
August 20, 2024
August 20, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg
Dylan Hollway and Philip Broberg are now members of the St. Louis Blues. The Edmonton Oilers declined to match the offer sheets signed by the two restricted free agents last week.
Holloway was the fourteenth overall pick in the 2020 NHL draft. He had eighteen points in 89 games with the Oilers, and seven points in 26 playoff games. 25 of those playoff games came this past spring. Holloway made his NHL debut during Game 4 of the 2022 Western Conference FInal in which the Oilers were swept by the Colorado Avalanche.
Holloway had seemingly just grabbed a hold of an NHL roster spot with his performance in the 2024 playoffs. He scored five goals in the playoffs, and he spent a significant amount of time on Leon Draisaitl’s wing. Holloway led the Oilers with 86 hits in the playoffs, which put him second in the entire league.
The Oilers’ forward group just became a lot older and slower with the loss of Holloway. Ten of the thirteen current Oilers forwards are over the age of 30. Draisaitl and Connor McDavid are two that are under 30. Newly acquired Vasily Podkolzin is 23 years old. It felt like Podkolzin was a potential replacement for Holloway when the deal happened, and that now appears to be the case with certainty.
Holloway made a short-sighted decision to take a few hundred thousand dollars more than what the Oilers reportedly offered in a three-year deal with an average annual value just a shade over $1 million. Holloway could’ve taken another three runs at a Stanley Cup and had the chance to play with Draisaitl more to increase his value for his next contract, but he took the immediate pay day from the Blues instead.
Broberg had thirteen points in 81 games for the Oilers. The 2019 eighth overall pick also got three points in 20 playoff games for the Oilers. Ten of those playoff games were played in the 2024 playoffs. Broberg entered the lineup for Game 4 of the Western Conference Final after watching the team’s first fifteen games of the spring from the press box. Broberg scored a goal in Game 5 of that series. He also scored a goal in the Oilers’ first home game in a Stanley Cup Final since 2006. Broberg played admirably for a young player that came into the playoffs so late and was forced to play on the second pairing on his off side.
Broberg was a controversial pick in 2019. He was a bit of a reach with the eighth pick, and he was chosen over highly skilled forwards like Trevor Zegras, Matthew Boldy, Cole Caufield, and Podkolzon. Broberg was consistently blocked by the Oilers. First, it was with the acquisition of Brett Kulak at the 2022 trade deadline. Then it was by Ryan Murray and Markus Niemelainen out of training camp in 2022. Murray was signed on September 2, 2022 after former Oilers general manager Ken Holland said that Broberg was going to have to play his way off the team to not be on the team that fall. They chose to keep Niemelainen over Broberg as the seventh defenceman. I thought Broberg had the better camp, but the Oilers wanted Broberg to play more minutes in the AHL.
Murray got hurt and only ever played in thirteen games for the Oilers. Niemelainen got a 23-game look because Broberg hurt himself in a kitchen accident after being sent to the Bakersfield Condors that fall. Hindsight is 20/20, but I wonder how different Broberg’s story might’ve been if Murray had not been signed and Holland had actually prioritized getting Broberg NHL ice time earlier in the 2022-23 season. Broberg eventually played 46 games for the Oilers that year and didn’t look out of place. However, the team acquired Mattias Ekholm at the 2023 trade deadline to improve the defence group. That was the right decision because Ekholm has been fantastic, but the decision bumped Broberg down the depth chart.
Broberg was often deployed as the seventh defenceman or in sheltered ice time when he did play. He never took the bull by the horns and made it impossible to remove him from the lineup, but I also understand why Broberg was frustrated by his lack of opportunity. Those are the unfortunate realities of being a young player on a championship caliber team.
The reality is that the organization didn’t think enough of Broberg to get him an NHL roster spot on his natural side. The only way that he was going to get ice time with the Oilers was by playing on the right side, which I think was a poor game plan for Broberg. Broberg also wanted a change of scenery. He requested a trade back in Decemebr of last year. Ryan Rishaug reported that Broberg’s agent, Darren Ferris, said that multiple other teams were prepared to sign Broberg to offer sheets. It feels like the Oilers were destined to lose Broberg this summer, and they were clearly fine with that.
I’m disappointed to have lost both Holloway and Broberg because they were both promising young players. I also got to watch them live at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in 2018. However, both players’ development were slowed by injuries and a frustrating lack of opportunity while playing on a team that was emerging as a championship contender. It’s also entirely fair to say that neither player truly earned a roster spot by making it impossible to remove them from the roster. Holloway has played four professional seasons since getting drafted, and Broberg has played in five professional seasons since getting drafted. They were definitely slow to develop. They have both also dealt with multiple injuries that have not helped their development.
Losing Holloway and Broberg means that the Oilers now have two less young players with upside in their lineup, which will make it more difficult to be competitive for the duration of Connor McDavid and Draisaitl’s next contracts. It’s easy enough to replace left wingers, but finding young top four defencemen is difficult. Broberg might never become that, but he just might with an opportunity on his natural side with the Blues.
The departure of Holloway and Broberg now means that every single one of Holland’s first round picks is no longer with the organization. Raphael Lavoie is the only other one of Holland’s prospects that has played any games with the Oilers. That just goes to show how poor Holland’s drafting and development were. He got the development part right by waiting on Evan Bouchard (although he could’ve played much sooner in my opinion) and Vincent Desharnais, but it hasn’t worked with any of his own drafted prospects to this point. Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson was clearly not married to any of Holland’s prospects. He also moved 2021 first rounder Xavier Bourgault earlier this summer.
The Oilers received a second and a third round pick in the 2025 NHL draft as compensation for losing their restricted free agents. The Oilers also acquired a 2028 third round pick and 2023 fifth round pick Paul Fischer from the Blues for future considerations, which softens the blow of losing two former first round picks slightly. Most fans think this is a weak return for two former first round picks, but I actually think it’s not that bad of a return for two former first rounders that hadn’t earned roster spots in four and five professional seasons respectively. It feels like too little because the organization wasn’t looking to trade either player, but I point to two recent trades that make it seem like a reasonable return.
Alexander Holtz (2020 seventh overall pick) went to the Vegas Golden Knights along with backup goaltender Akira Schmid for Paul Cotter and a 2025 third round pick on June 29, 2024. Holtz has 28 points in 82 NHL games, which is more than Holloway, and he essentially got traded for a third rounder.
The other was the Podkolzin trade that happened on Sunday night. Podkolzin was the tenth overall pick in the 2019 draft, and he has 35 points in 137 NHL games. His development has been going in the wrong direction since his rookie season, but he was drafted equally as high and as recently as Holloway and Broberg were drafted. The return for the Vancouver Canucks was a fourth round pick.
Related: Oilers acquire Podkolzin
Now, we look to the future. The Oilers have made a number of moves to change the look of their prospect pool since Holland’s contract was not renewed. Bourgault and Jake Chiasson were moved to the Ottawa Senators for Roby Jarventie and a 2025 fourth round pick that was eventually used to acquire Podkolzin. Ryan McLeod and Ty Tullio were dealt to the Buffalo Sabres for 2022 ninth overall pick Matthew Savoie.
It turns out that the Cody Ceci trade might’ve been more than just a cap dump. It seemed like a move to create space for Broberg, but it ultimately wasn’t. It saved the Oilers $2.3 million for the coming season, but Ty Emberson seems like a kid that can play. I don’t want to call him a direct replacement for Broberg, but he’s a 24-year old defenceman that’s a possibility on the right side for years to come.
Related: Oilers trade Ceci to the Sharks
Emberson played for Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch with the Hartford Wolfpack in the 2022-23 season, and was named the AHL Eastern Conference’s shutdown defender of the year. He got ten points in 30 games for the San Jose Sharks last year, which is great production; but that level of offence appears to be outside the normal level of expectation for him. Emberson’s underlying numbers don’t look great on the surface, but he did quite well considering the level of team that the Sharks had last season. He got some top four minutes due to injuries last season, but I’m not sold that top four should be the expectation for Emberson with the Oilers this coming season. It feels like a presumptuous expectation. It might be the plan though.
As I noted in a late-night piece last night, the Oilers can now submit a roster that’s $59,166 below the salary cap without putting Evander Kane on LTIR. PuckPedia confirmed that as well, and also shared that they could exceed the cap by $5.066 million by putting Kane on LTIR. The problem with that is that they would not be able to accrue cap space to use at the trade deadline while Kane is on LTIR, which means they would start at $0 of accrued cap space whenever Kane is activated from the LTIR.
Ultimately, letting Holloway and Broberg walk gives the Oilers the most cap and roster flexibility this coming season. They will be able to add at the deadline regardless of what happens with Kane, and they got a second and a third round pick in next year’s draft to potentially use as currency. We’ll see if Jackson and Oilers GM Stan Bowman have more moves up their sleeves.
It’s disappointing to see both Holloway and Broberg leave, but they aren’t crushing blows to the organization. Time will tell if letting them go was a mistake or not. This doesn’t really change the Stanley Cup expectations for the Oilers this season, but they lost some speed up front and their defence group now has a new set of questions facing it.
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