Oilers decline to match offer sheets, leading to rarest of NHL moves

The Edmonton Oilers declined to match the restricted offer sheets that defenseman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway signed with the St. Louis Blues over a week ago. Both players now become official members of the Blues, while the Oilers will receive a 2025 second-round pick (for Broberg) and a 2025 third-round pick (for Holloway) as compensation.

The fact both players even signed offer sheets is rare enough in the modern NHL landscape.

It is even rarer that the offers were not matched.

NHL teams have developed an aversion to utilizing restricted free agency over the years and rarely take advantage of the opportunity to add young talent. Since the introduction of the salary cap at the start of the 2005-06 season, only 12 offer sheets have been signed.

Until Tuesday, only two of them were successful.

The Anaheim Ducks refused to match an offer sheet that Dustin Penner signed with the Oilers in 2007, while the Montreal Canadiens opted not to match an offer that forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi signed with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2021.

Broberg and Holloway become just the third and fourth successful offer sheets in nearly 20 years.

So why do teams never utilize this? There are a couple of theories.

The first is that NHL general managers tend to be afraid of having another team target their restricted free agents in future seasons. The Kotkaniemi offer sheet was a direct response to Montreal attempting to sign Hurricanes star Sebastian Aho two years earlier (the Hurricanes matched). When Carolina had the chance to poach one of Montreal's players, it got its revenge.

The other, far more nefarious theory, is that offer sheets tend to inflate the price of restricted free agents and teams would like to avoid that for salary cap purposes. Broberg and Holloway, for example, signed significantly larger contracts (two years, $9.16 million for Broberg and two years, $4.58 million for Holloway) than they would have had they simply re-signed in Edmonton.

Given how rare it is to find quality players on the unrestricted free agent market, and how much teams value young players in trades, perhaps teams will start taking the RFA path if for no other reason than out of necessity.