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…
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