Winners, Losers from Blues' Broberg, Holloway Offer Sheets as Oilers Decline to Match

Well, folks, the first NHL offer-sheet saga since 2021 has come to a close. The Edmonton Oilers declined to match the St. Louis Blues' tendered offer sheets to Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, so the players will report to St. Louis for camp next month.

Broberg agreed to a two-year contract with a $4,580,917 average annual value, and Holloway agreed to a two-year contract with a $2,290,457 AAV.

Meanwhile, cap-strapped Edmonton received as second-round pick for Broberg and a third-round pick for Holloway. In a separate transaction, St. Louis announced it sent a 2028 third-round pick and unsigned 2023 fifth-round draft selection Paul Fischer to Edmonton for future considerations.

A top-10 2019 draft pick, Broberg showed promising developmental strides in the Oilers' run to the Stanley Cup Final last season. He eventually ended up partnered with Darnell Nurse and held his own on the biggest stage. It's a small sample size, and the 23-year-old has been in and out of the lineup for years, but he's got potential for a consistent breakout this year.

Meanwhile Holloway, 23, grew into himself last season with five goals and seven points in 25 regular-season games, then stepped up with some verteran-esque timely goals in a grueling postseason.

Broberg could really round out the Blues' lacking top four if he continues building on his postseason performance, and Holloway makes a great complementary piece as the Blues figure out what their young core is truly made of.

Beyond that, let's break down the ramifications of the deal with some winners and losers.

The Blues have been in a curios place since that 2019 Stanley Cup win. They've had middling results, with two consecutive first-round exits and a second-round exit from 2020-22, followed up by narrowly missing the playoffs the past two seasons.

The team's front office decisions—selling Vladimir Tarasenko here, keeping Pavel Buchnevich there—have basically indicated that management is not yet ready to throw in the towel for a full rebuild, but doesn't want to totally abandon the future for an unlikely Cup run. Perhaps they don't have to, and perhaps these offer sheets facilitate the perfect gentle rebuild.

Broberg and Holloway aren't going to make or break your franchise, but two years of complementary edge as the young Blues core featuring Buchnevich, Jordan Kyrou, and Robert Thomas grows is perfect to see where the team is at and if a full rebuild is needed in two years.

The Blues had the money and the middling situation to do this, and the vision surrounding the young core seems clearer now. The potential Broberg showed throughout the playoffs is the defensive direction St. Louis needs to be headed in if they're leaning into the potential of the current core.

When the Oilers somehow unloaded Cody Ceci's contract on the Sharks, you thought they might be able to financially finesse matching either if not both of these offer sheets. And yes, both Broberg and Holloway are young players with exciting ceilings who proved they could hang throughout the Oilers' 2024 Cup run.

Their roles—defenseman Broberg potentially alongside Darnell Nurse or at least rounding out the top four, and Holloway the perfect depth scorer for a Cup team—were expected to expand this upcoming season.

The thing is, the Oilers still only have $945,833 in cap space—and that's with Broberg and Holloway off the books. Evander Kane's rumored season-starting LTIR trip should take his $5.1 million cap hit off the books, but the idea that he could come back at any time is haunting for the Oilers' cap situation this year, and it's reasonable they erred on the conservative side by not matching these offer sheets to start the season.

According to PuckPedia, this could fit a $4.4 million cap hit at the in-season deadline.

This is great news considering the Oilers have recently done some of their best work at the deadline, and they're a Cup contender who will surely look to shop around at that time. They also made some slick free-agency moves prior to this situation. But the first half of this season might be a bit of a struggle with a big question mark next to Nurse with both Ceci and Broberg gone, and Holloway's knack for sparking the team up will be missed.

If the Oilers either put Kane on LTIR and get him off the books or put him on IR and accrue cap space, they should be in an OK spot to make a move at the deadline. We also can't forget the solid job they've done upgrading their forward group this offseason, signing Viktor Arvidsson, Vasily Podkolzin and a bought-out Jeff Skinner, and re-signing Corey Perry.

It's not like offer sheets are predictable, convenient or inevitable, but there was a palpable inevitability of the Oilers' cap situation eventually tying their hands, so you could argue optically it's a plus that they got two looming contracts off their hands without having to make decisions about them. Especially with Leon Drasaitl's contract negotiations coming up (and later Evan Bouchard's and Connor McDavid's), you knew multiple things had to give.

Maybe it's a spin to consider a cap-strapped team unable to match an offer sheet a "win," but it's not all bad. Let's see how the Oilers use the flexibility (and draft picks) down the line.

Offer sheets are rare for several good reasons: They are expensive, they often come at the expense of lofty draft assets, and they often bring about a unique pressure on both the front office and the player in question. But the worst reason has probably been the most common: A lot of NHL GMs are buddies, and up until very recently it was basically an unwritten rule to steer clear of the offer sheet if you wanted to remain in the good graces of your peers.

Even with this St. Louis-Edmonton transaction, Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman said there was "no way" St. Louis would've tendered these offer sheets if Ken Holland was still Edmonton's general manager.

"If Ken Holland was still the GM of the Edmonton Oilers, there's no way these offer sheets are getting done," Friedman told Bob Stauffer of Oilers Now (h/t the Hockey News). "I do think that Doug Armstrong's friendship with Ken Holland absolutely plays a role in how this played out."

For his part, Armstrong denied the notion:

Whatever the case, the freeze on this type of move is thawing.

The last offer-sheet saga ended in 2021, when the Hurricanes and unconventional owner Tom Dundon poached Jesperi Kotkaniemi from the Canadiens a few years after the Canadiens unsuccessfully attempted to poach Sebastian Aho from the Canes.

The unconventionality of the Canes and their outsider, businessman owner gave a traditional team like the Habs a feeling that tendering an offer was less of a faux pas. This opened up the floodgates to more offer-sheet talk over the past few years, and now these from St. Louis.

As front offices slowly include diverse minds, we're starting to see more unconventional business. There have been just 10 offer sheets in the NHL since 2006, and don't expect an offer sheet every year, but teams are acknowledging them as options in their toolbox now more than ever.

On the 32 Thoughts podcast, Friedman reminded us that Broberg requested a trade back in December, and the Oilers allowed his camp to speak to other teams. Even with the firing of coach Jay Woodcroft and hiring of Kris Knoblauch, Friedman said in retrospect "I'm just not convinced (Broberg) ever changed his mind."

It's thought that Broberg, who has bounced in and out of the lineup, has wanted a better opportunity to establish himself. He finally got that and excelled at the end of last season's Cup run, and now the Blues might be the ones to benefit.