The Edmonton Oilers did not match the offer sheets the St. Louis Blues tendered to forward Dylan Holloway and defenseman Philip Broberg. The Blues gave offer sheet contracts to the two players a week ago, and since then, the Oilers have been busy making moves.
The contract for Holloway comes in at two years with an average annual value (AAV) of $2,290,457, which results in the Blues sending a 2025 third-round draft pick to the Oilers. For Broberg, the AAV of the two-year deal is $4,580,917, which will see the Oilers get a second-round pick in 2025 as compensation.
Both contracts come in just a dollar short of the next tier for compensation, and will only be sending a second and third-round pick in the deal.
Blues Overpay To Land Holloway & Broberg
It has been reported that the asking price from each player on a contract would have come in at a significantly lower price than they are earning now, but that is the business of using an offer sheet to get the deal done. The Oilers, who are coming off of a trip to the Stanley Cup Final, don’t have a ton of cap flexibility, so this was a smart move by the Blues.
Bringing in Holloway and giving him a shot in the top-six could spark a big breakout year for him. In parts of two seasons with the Oilers, Holloway has 18 points in 89 regular season games. The 22-year-old winger who was selected 14th overall in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft has struggled to make the big jump and find success in the Oilers’ forward group. With a bigger role on a team with lower expectations, he would find his stride and fit in very well. In the playoffs, Holloway played in 25 games for the Oilers last season, recording five goals and seven points. An expected deal for Holloway was projected to be a bit more than $1 million.
Related: Oilers Trades Gives Indication of Holloway/Broberg Decision
As for Broberg, he was the top target for the Blues to try and snag, and Holloway was included to help try and get the deal done. Broberg is a 6-foot-3 puck-moving defenseman with good two-way play, and at only 23 years old, he has a lot of room to grow into a better defenseman.
With the Oilers, Broberg posted 13 points in 81 career regular season NHL games and had 10 games in the playoffs last season but played a very strong game in his time in the lineup.
Both players are young and have enough experience to be able to build off of. The Blues, who have been a fringe playoff team over the past number of years, are looking to get better and younger, and looking at both deals, they are getting better and younger with this move.
Oilers Hand Was Forced To Not Match
With reports that Evander Kane will start the season on long-term injured reserve, the Oilers have a bit more flexibility. With that being said, they still don’t want to be paying that much money for Holloway and Broberg, and especially with big contracts like Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard coming up, they can’t commit that much money to the two players.
The Oilers stayed busy over the last week preparing to accept the compensation. Their first move was acquiring Vasili Podkolzin from the Vancouver Canucks, who is a relatively fair comparable to Holloway, and bringing in Ty Emberson from the San Jose Sharks in exchange for Cody Ceci, who was making more money than they could afford in the role he played, and a third-round pick.
Emberson has shown steady development since being drafted in 2018, but likely won’t be a top-four option for the Oilers. He is a right-shot defenseman who played 30 games for the Sharks last season and looked fine in a depth role, and the Oilers could certainly use more defensive depth.
They essentially found their replacements for Holloway and Broberg, while still getting the compensation from the deals. While Podkolzin and Emberson are downgrades to Holloway and Broberg on paper, they are in a better position now, and moving forward, than if they had matched the offers.
