It’s not often that the hockey world gets a significant shake-up in mid-August, but we got just that.
The St. Louis Blues and Edmonton Oilers were in the midst of the action after Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway signed offer sheets with the Blues — two years at $4,580,917 and two years at $2,290,457, respectively.
Though not in the range of what Jesperi Kotkaniemi accepted in 2021, what the Blues offered to Broberg and Holloway far exceeded the asks both the young guns had for Edmonton, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said during a summer edition of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast, by as much as 250 per cent.
He the said the large offers amounted to “poison pills … that the Blues have given the Oilers.”
The decision won’t be an easy one for new Oilers general manager Stan Bowman, but that seems precisely why the Blues opted to act now.
“There was also some strategic stuff about this too. The timing was not accidental,” Friedman said.
The Blues made two very intentional choices in order to put as much pressure on the Oilers as possible, Friedman added: ensuring both players signed the offer sheets, not just one, and doing so after the arbitration deadline had passed.
“One of the things (the Blues) were worried about was doing an offer sheet and then having Edmonton trade for a player that was arbitration-eligible and allowing themselves to potentially open up a new buyout window,” Friedman said.
If the Blues had signed Broberg and Holloway before the arbitration deadline and the Oilers traded for an arbitration-eligible player, Friedman said, cash-strapped Edmonton could have used that new, 48-hour buyout window triggered by arbitration to create the necessary cap flexibility to match the offer sheets.
They might have done so, too, since the Oilers would, in a perfect world, be interested in keeping both players.
According to Friedman, the Oilers tried to sign both Holloway and Broberg to avoid the possibility of an offer sheet, but Broberg wasn’t prepared to sign a new contract until the season finished and he had time to evaluate his future in Edmonton.
“I also believe that when St. Louis and Edmonton talked about Pavel Buchnevich before the Blues kept him and eventually extended him, I think the Oilers knew that the Blues liked both players,” Friedman added.
“At the end of the day, (Blues GM Doug) Armstrong was not happy with his lineup and he saw two young players he thinks could really help him, and (he) can be ruthless. He said, ‘You know what, I’m going to do this because it can make us stronger and, also, it can hurt the defending Western Conference champion.’ I just think that’s the way he does business.”
Is there a possibility of a revenge offer sheet from Edmonton to one of the Blues’ young players?
Probably not.
“I would bet St. Louis has done a lot of the math on this. Yes, the cap is expected to go up again next year by close to $5 million. But you have a (Leon) Draisaitl extension coming and you have a (Connor) McDavid extension coming and a (Evan) Bouchard extension coming,” Friedman said. “St. Louis would be betting that Edmonton can’t do this, and this is one of the things they’ve talked about.”
The Oilers now have until Tuesday to either match the Blues’ offer or accept the compensation — and Friedman believed Bowman and the Oilers will use the entire time to make a decision.
Kane’s uncertain status
Though Evander Kane was able to play through a sports hernia for the entirety of the 2023-24 season, the injury eventually sidelined him for most of the Stanley Cup Final. Now, with just over a month before training camp begins, it’s looking like the Oilers will be without the winger for a significant amount of time.
“I believe Evander Kane is going to have surgery. I think that one of the reasons it’s kind of taken until this long was because, I think they had some conversations about who was going to do it, which doctor, and I think they had to work that out,” Friedman reported. “Eventually, he’s going to have the surgery and he’s going to be out months. I’m not talking, like, one or two months. I think it’s going to be longer than that.”
There is a potential silver lining for GMs when it comes to a long injury recovery. If Kane is expected to miss the regular season, Bowman has the ability to place him on LTIR to free up the cap flexibility to make changes to the roster and can bring the winger back into the fold for Game 1 of the playoffs, when cap compliance is no longer required.
The snag, though, is that Friedman believes neither the team nor player is certain that the injury will last that long.
“I had some people say to me (that) there’s no guarantee that Kane’s going to be out that long,” he said. “But, at the very least, what you can do is you can go over the cap 10 per cent in the summer and then you can punt this decision into the year. At the very least, the Oilers could do that.”
Kane will be heading into Year 3 of a four-year contract, carrying a cap hit of $5.125 million.