Edmonton’s Cap Planning Could Be Hindered By An Offer Sheet

While offer sheets are few and far between in the NHL, all it takes is one team that decides to try to disrupt things and sign a player on a cap-strapped team to an offer sheet to change things.  Looking at who is left, Edmonton is a team that would find themselves in a tough spot if one of their restricted free agents, defenseman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway, were to eventually sign an offer sheet with another team.

Even after moving out Ryan McLeod to Buffalo earlier this summer, the Oilers currently find themselves projected over the salary cap by $354K, per PuckPedia, and that’s with a 21-player roster.  While there has been plenty of speculation that winger Evander Kane could be on LTIR to start the season, that’s only a short-term solution as they’d have to get back into cap compliance to activate him later on.  The fact they went and moved McLeod out suggests that they don’t expect Kane to miss the entire year so they’ll have to drop below the $88MM Upper Limit at some point.

To that end, it stands to reason that Edmonton will be pushing for bridge deals with both Broberg and Holloway, perhaps as short as a one-year agreement to keep the cap charge as low as possible.  It’s a route they took with Evan Bouchard last summer and did so in the past with McLeod and Kailer Yamamoto coming off their entry-level contracts.  All things considered, they’ve been pretty consistent with that practice and understandably so.

But what if one or both of those players want the security of a longer-term agreement?  At this point, it looks like the only way they’d be able to get one is by signing an offer sheet.

Granted, neither player has done enough at the NHL level to command the type of offer from another team that pushes the compensation threshold to the level of a first-round pick.  But it doesn’t have to get that high to put Edmonton in a bind, assuming the players are willing to sign an offer sheet elsewhere.

Broberg only played 12 regular season games for the Oilers last season but the 2019 eighth-overall pick was quite productive with AHL Bakersfield.  The 23-year-old then got into ten playoff games and played well enough that there will be teams that should be willing to take a multi-year flyer on Broberg at a salary that likely surpasses what GM Stan Bowman has in mind.

Holloway is in a similar situation.  He also wound up spending time with the Condors and produced 16 points in 18 games there.  But the 2020 14th pick has rarely had a chance to play in Edmonton’s top six, instead being deployed in limited minutes including time on the fourth line.  The end result was a pedestrian nine points in 38 games.  But Holloway was a bit more impactful in the playoffs, picking up five goals in 25 contests, giving him a bit of a boost heading into negotiations.

Again, they’re not going to break the bank with an offer sheet but they don’t have to sign a pricey deal in order to put Edmonton into a bind.  Let’s say a team signs Broberg to an offer sheet at the top of the lowest threshold that yields compensation.  That would be a $2.29MM price tag with a third-round pick going the other way.  (Note that the signing team must have their own third-round selection, they can’t use another team’s.)

A one-year offer at that number is by no means a crazy gamble to take for a team looking to add some upside on the back end.  That’s a more than reasonable price, both in terms of salary and draft pick compensation.  It’s safe to assume that $2.29MM is a fair bit higher than what’s currently budgeted for Broberg; Edmonton might be hoping for half of that.  If they match (and they almost certainly would), now their overage surpasses $2.64MM with Holloway still to sign.

Now let’s run Holloway through that same scenario, signing a one-year, $2.29MM offer sheet (with the same team after Broberg is matched or someone else).  Again, that’s a more than reasonable offer to try to get a fairly recent first-round pick at a fairly low acquisition cost.  And again, while they’d be a near lock to match, doing so then pushes their overage to $4.93MM.

While Kane potentially starting on LTIR would allow them to narrowly squeak under the cap to start the season, they’d be forced to carry a maximum of one extra skater for that time and then need to cut nearly $5MM upon Kane’s return.  That’s a task that’s much easier said than done in-season without taking away a core player.

If Broberg and/or Holloway were to sign a multi-year offer sheet where the compensation would push into the next threshold, we’d be looking at more than $2.29MM and less than $4.58MM with the compensation being a second-round selection.  We’ve already seen what offers at the lower end of that range could do, going higher would put them in more of a bind, making it harder to keep their team intact while matching the offer.

Again, this is something that is unlikely to happen and even if it did, Edmonton would almost certainly match.  But if a team is looking to wreak some havoc on a rival’s cap structure, this is one way to try to do it, assuming they could get the player to put pen to paper on an offer sheet.