Grade the moves: St. Louis gets aggressive with offer sheets; Penguins get Cody Glass

Some random mid-August NHL roster movement!

Every summer we try to convince ourselves that THIS MIGHT BE THE YEAR somebody in the NHL actually takes advantage of restricted free agency and tries to poach a player away from a cap-strapped team.

Then it never happens.

In the salary cap era we had only seen 10 offer sheets actually signed coming into this offseason, with only two of them being successful (Dustin Penner going from Anaheim to Edmonton and Jesperi Kotkaniemi going from Montreal to Carolina).

The other eight? All matched.

We had also only seen five offer sheets get signed since the 2010 offseason.

In other words: It almost never happens, and even when it does it is almost never successful.

There is a belief the lack of action on the offer sheet front is because general managers are working together to hold RFA salaries down, or that they do not want to ruffle feathers that will result in their team getting targeted in the future (we saw that with Montreal and Carolina with the Sebastian Aho and Kotkaniemi sagas). While all of that may be part of it, I also think there is another layer to why we never see them — it’s really hard to make it all come together.

You not only need to have the proper draft pick compensation to sign the offer sheet (you must have your OWN draft picks; not draft picks from another team), but you need to find a player that wants to play for your team, agrees to terms with you on a contract, and is currently with a team that can not match or will not match the offer.

That is a lot of steps.

There might be attempts every year we never know about simply because teams and players can not come to terms on a contract.

It is, after all, still a negotiation and the player still has some say in the matter.

Well, this week the St. Louis Blues not only decided to dive into the RFA market by utilizing offer sheets, they also found a couple of players they could come to terms with on agreements.

It was also one of the boldest, most aggressive and, quite honestly, most diabolical uses of offer sheets we have seen in quite some time.

The Blues signed Oilers RFA’s Dylan Holloway (forward) and Philip Broberg (defense) to offer sheets, really putting the pressure on new Oilers general manager Stan Bowman.

The double offer sheet is an idea that hockey writer Travis Yost has been talking about for years, and is specifically designed to target a cap-strapped team that would then potentially have to make a decision on which player to match, which player to let go, and perhaps even cause even more salary cap headaches for them.

The Oilers, who are already more than $7 million over the cap this offseason and with multiple restricted free agents, were the perfect target.

The Blues signed Holloway to a two-year, $4.58 million offer sheet that, if unmatched by the Oilers, would require them to send their 2025 third-round pick to the Oilers.

They signed Broberg to a two-year, $9.16 million contract that, if unmatched, would require them to send their 2025 second-round pick to the Oilers.

If either contract had been worth one dollar more it would have bumped each level of compensation up to the next level. For Holloway, that would have bumped the compensation from a third to a second, and for Broberg it would have bumped it to a first and a third.

The Oilers have until early next week to decide whether or not they are going to match either offer.

Let’s get dig into it a little more, and also talk about Kyle Dubas acquiring his favorite type of player — a bottom-six forward that doesn’t provide offense.