The St. Louis Blues have tendered offer sheets to a pair of restricted free-agent (RFA) Edmonton Oilers, 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.
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 eighth overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, Broberg turned 23 in June. He’s got two goals and 11 assists in 81 regular season games and two goals and one assist in 20 postseason games with the Oilers.
Holloway, the 14th overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, turns 23 next month. As an NHLer, he has nine goals and nine assists in 89 regular season games, and five goals and two assists in 26 playoff games.
Related: Oilers Must Match Blues’ Offer Sheet for Holloway & Let Broberg Walk
Given their salary cap situation, the Oilers are very unlikely to match both offers. They can probably figure out a way to pay one of Broberg and Holloway, but that means deciding which of the two they are prepared to give up on.
Projecting a player’s long-term potential is never easy, even after having worked with them for a few years. The Oilers have learned this the hard way a few times in their history, saying goodbye to a young prospect that went on to excel elsewhere. Here are three players the Oilers gave up on too early:
Walt Poddubny
Walt Poddubny was drafted 90th overall by the Oilers in 1980 and made his NHL debut in their 1981-82 season opener. He played four games for the Oilers in 1981-82 but spent most of that season playing in the minor leagues. Then on March 8, 1982, less than a month after his 22nd birthday, Poddubny was traded with fellow young forward Phil Drouillard to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Laurie Boschman.
Oilers coach and general manager Glen Sather said that Boschman, a 22-year-old who at that point had 109 points in 187 regular season NHL games over parts of three seasons with Toronto, was ‘the kind of center’ the Oilers needed.
Poddubny had 28 goals and 31 assists in 72 games with the Maple Leafs in 1982-83. The left winger went on to have three consecutive seasons scoring at least 38 goals, with the New York Rangers in 1986-87 and 1987-88, and Quebec Nordiques in 1988-89. He suited up for the Wales Conference at the 1989 All-Star Game in Edmonton.
As for Boschman, Sather said at the time of the trade: “If he doesn’t fit in now … I’m willing to be patient.” Ironically, almost exactly a year later, on March 7, 1983, Sather shipped Boschman to the Winnipeg Jets for right wing Willy Lindstrom. Turns out Sather might have given up on Boschman too soon, too: Boschman went on to score at least 25 goals in four of the next five seasons with the Jets.
Fortunately, for the Oilers, they were so rich with talent in the 1980s that Sather could afford such misfires. Edmonton won the Stanley Cup five times between 1984 and 1990, including twice (1984 and 1985) with Lindstrom.
Martin Rucinsky
Edmonton had a horrendous run of drafting from 1984 to 1990, in which only one of their first-round draft picks went on to appear in at least 20 NHL games, and that player, Francois Leroux (19th overall in 1988), didn’t even make it to 250 career regular season games.
That changed in 1991 when the Oilers made two first-round selections who would both have lengthy NHL careers: centre Tyler Wright (12th overall) and left winger Martin Rucinsky (20th). Unfortunately, neither of them were in Edmonton for very long.
Wright played in 41 games over four seasons with the Oilers from 1992-93 to 1995-96 before being traded, at age 23, to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a 1996 seventh-round draft pick. He went on to appear in 613 career NHL regular season games.
That’s nothing, however, compared to Rucinsky who suited up for a grand total of two regular season games with the Oilers, in 1991-92, before Sather traded him to the Quebec Nordiques for goaltender Ron Tugnutt and forward prospect Brad Zavisha. The deal went down on March 10, 1992, one day before Rucinsky’s 21st birthday.
Rucinsky would go on to play 961 regular season NHL games, racking up 241 goals and 371 assists for 612 points. He was an NHL All-Star Game participant in 2000, while playing for the Montreal Canadiens. Tugnutt served as Bill Ranford’s backup until he was selected by the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in the 1993 NHL Expansion Draft, while Zavisha’s NHL career comprised all of two games, both with the Oilers in 1993-94.
Miroslav Satan
Miroslav Satan, a 6-foot-1 Slovak winger who Edmonton drafted at No. 111 in 1993, made his NHL debut in 1995-96, notching 18 goals in 62 games. As an NHL sophomore, he continued to show scoring ability, potting 17 goals through 64 games with the Oilers in 1996-97.
But Sather apparently wasn’t a big believer in Satan, at least not enough to fork out significant money for the pending RFA forward. The Oilers GM was worried that Satan would find Edmonton’s contract offer unsatisfactory and go to play in Europe, for which the Oilers would receive no compensation.
So at the 1997 Trade Deadline, Sather dealt Satan, then 22, to the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for defenceman Craig Millar and forward Barrie Moore. Combined, Millar and Moore would play just 40 regular season NHL games with the Oilers.
Satan, meanwhile, went on to have an incredible career, reaching the 20-goal mark 10 times, including a career-high 40 goals in 1998-99. He played in two NHL All-Star Games (2000 and 2003), won the Stanley Cup in 2009 as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and finished his NHL career with regular season totals of 363 goals and 735 points in 1,050 games.
With Edmonton’s decisions about whether to match looming, Oilers fans hope Broberg and/or Holloway don’t one day end up on this list.
