The St. Louis Blues sent shockwaves throughout Oil Country on Tuesday (Aug. 13) when they tendered offer sheets to a pair of Edmonton Oilers restricted free-agents, defenceman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway. Broberg’s offer is two years at $4,580,917 annually, while Holloway’s offer is two years at $2,290,457 annually.
Related: Blues Tender Offer Sheets to Oilers’ Broberg and Holloway
Edmonton has until Aug. 20 to match each respective offer or receive compensation, which would be St. Louis’ 2025 second-round draft pick for Broberg and St. Louis’ 2025 third-round draft pick for Holloway.
The Blues’ aggressive moves have put Edmonton in a real pickle because the Oilers currently don’t have the cap space to match either offer. Edmonton issued qualifying offers to Broberg and Holloway along with three other pending restricted free agents on June 30, preventing them from becoming unrestricted free agents on July 1.
Broberg and Holloway are only the 11th and 12th players in the NHL’s salary cap era to be tendered offer sheets. Before Tuesday, just two players had been tendered offer sheets in the last decade, and this is only the second time in NHL history that one team has tendered offer sheets to multiple players from the same team. Suffice to say, this kind of stuff pretty much never happens.
While each year brings dozens of restricted free agents who are eligible to be tendered offer sheets, it almost seems like general managers have an unspoken agreement when it comes to engaging in offer sheet warfare. Edmonton Sports Talk’s Oilers pre- and post-game host Tom Gazzola summed it up perfectly, telling CTV Edmonton, “Most times, the GMs in the NHL are gentlemanly about it and don’t do it to one another.”
But in the summer of 2024, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong certainly isn’t being gentlemanly. And Edmonton fans can be mad about that, but it’s kind of hard not to think that maybe this is just karma catching up with the Oilers.
Oilers Have Infamous History With Offer Sheets
Twenty percent of all prior offer sheets in the salary cap era were tendered by the Oilers. In a span of less than three weeks during the summer of 2007, then-Oilers GM Kevin Lowe tendered offer sheets to Buffalo Sabres winger Tomas Vanek and Anaheim Ducks forward Dustin Penner. Both moves went over like a lead balloon.
On July 6, 2007, Lowe offered the 23-year-old Vanek a seven-year, $50 million contract, which had an average annual value of more than 10 times Vanek’s 2006-07 salary. Buffalo immediately matched, so Lowe later went after Penner, offering the 24-year-old a five-year, $21.5 million deal. Anaheim ultimately elected not to match, the first of so far only two instances during the salary cap era that a team has not matched (the other happened in 2021, when the Carolina Hurricanes snatched Jesperi Kotkaniemi from the Montreal Canadiens).
The Vanek move enraged Buffalo. Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn warned they would consider making offers to Oilers players in the future: “I’m happy we have Thomas for seven years. I think that’s really important to state here,” Quinn said at the time. “But it’s not doing the Edmonton Oilers any good what they did today.”
Meanwhile, Ducks GM Brian Burke called the Penner offer sheet a “gutless” move that was “an act of desperation for a general manager who is fighting to keep his job.” He later accused Lowe of escalating salaries for young players. The two GMs engaged in a war of words that got to a point where Burke said he would fight Lowe in a barn, before NHL commissioner Gary Bettman stepped in.
Edmonton gave up its first, second, and third-round picks in the 2008 NHL Draft as compensation for signing Penner. Those picks: 12th overall, traded away by Anaheim, used by Buffalo to select Tyler Myers; 43rd overall, used by Anaheim to select Justin Schultz; 73rd overall, traded away by Anaheim, used by the New York Islanders to select Kirill Petrov.
Penner played 304 games over parts of four seasons in Edmonton, scoring 93 goals and picking up 93 assists. On Feb 28. 2011, Edmonton traded Penner and a third-round pick in 2011 to the Los Angeles Kings for Colten Teubert, a first-round pick in 2011 (used to select Oscar Klefbom) and a third-round pick in the 2012 Draft (used to select Daniil Zharkov).
Edmonton GM Bowman is Controversial Figure
Something else to ponder is that new Oilers general manager Stan Bowman might not exactly be a beloved member of the GM fraternity.
Bowman was hired by Edmonton on July 24 (the Oilers’ general manager position was previously held by Ken Holland until his contract expired on July 1.), less than a month after being reinstated by the NHL.
The former Chicago Blackhawks GM had been banned from holding executive positions in the NHL since 2021, after an independent investigation revealed mishandling of allegations of sexual assault during Bowman’s time as general manager in Chicago. Bowman’s hiring by Edmonton was controversial and viewed unfavourably by many.
There’s probably no love lost for Bowman, either, as far as things are concerned with Armstrong, who was a rival Central Division GM during much of Bowman’s Chicago tenure.
Oilers Put Themselves at Risk
When news of the offer sheets broke, some fans quickly got out the pitchforks for Holland, who they blamed for not getting Broberg and Holland signed to new deals during last season.
On Tuesday’s edition of Oilers Now on 630 CHED in Edmonton, Oilers radio analyst Bob Stauffer said that as far as back as December and January, upper management was instructed by the top levels of the organization to get Broberg and Holloway signed.
Stauffer noted that both players were in the American Hockey League in January (Holloway was coming back from a knee injury that had kept him out of action for a couple months). With neither having a particularly great season at that point, the Oilers theoretically could have “bought low”, and signed Broberg and Holloway for less than they are now able to command after helping Edmonton get to Game 7 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final.
On the latest edition of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast Wednesday (Aug. 14), Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said that while Edmonton indeed tried to sign both during the regular season, Broberg had decided to “punt any contract discussions until the summer.” Friedman didn’t know if that was also the case with Holloway.
It’s easy to scapegoat Holland now that he’s gone, but what also must be remembered is that every move the former Oilers GM did (or didn’t) make last season was in the context of going all-in to win the championship, and the Oilers got to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, so it’s hard to argue with the means to that end.
The future is always sacrificed to some degree when a team prioritizes the present, and the Oilers are paying that price now. Ironically, when it comes to offer sheets, it could also be said that they are paying the price for sins deep in their past. And within a few days, the future in Edmonton may no longer include Broberg and/or Holloway.
