‘The summer of offer sheets’: NHL execs and agents on why a boom could be coming this offseason

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The circumstances were perfect in August for the St. Louis Blues to shock the hockey world — and the Edmonton Oilers.

The Blues identified two young restricted free agents, Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, whom the Oilers were struggling to re-sign — and ones they felt would fit into their core. They called their agents, convinced them to sign offer sheets and structured the contracts in a way that would make it difficult for the cap-strapped Oilers to match them. And they ensured, to the penny, that the offers would minimize the mandatory draft compensation they’d have to pay.

Broberg received a two-year deal worth $4,580,917, meaning the Blues would need to give the Oilers a 2026 second-round pick if they didn’t match. One dollar more and it would have been a 2026 first and third. Holloway got a two-year deal worth $2,290,457. One dollar more and the compensation would have increased from a third to a second.

In a league with a fraternity of general managers that has not historically considered offer sheets socially acceptable, the moves were bold, precise and creative — as well as labor-intensive, considering that to make them work, Blues GM Doug Armstrong had to reacquire the Blues’ 2026 second-round pick, which he had previously traded.

The Oilers were in a no-win position. As GM Stan Bowman, who had been on the job for less than a month when this went down, said on Hockey Night in Canada’s “After Hours” two Saturdays ago explaining his decision not to match, “We wouldn’t have been able to field a team if we matched either of those offer sheets.”

For the Blues, meanwhile, it’s been a win-win. More than seven months later, the 23-year-olds are huge parts of the success of a suddenly playoff-bound team riding a 10-game winning streak. Holloway has 26 goals and 63 points in 76 games, and Broberg is averaging 20:28 per game with eight goals and 27 points.

Around the league, the moves and their aftermath have put agents and GMs on notice.

“It was smart and probably an eye-opener,” New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald said.

How much so, we’ll see soon.

Some around the NHL are predicting that more teams will attempt the same maneuver this summer and beyond.

“Doug Armstrong comes in last year, does two on the same day and says, ‘F— it, I’m trying to make my team better and this is a tool available to me,’” agent Allan Walsh said. “When he did that, if you’re talking to GMs like I am, there has been a notable change in the way that offer sheets have been perceived.

“Fast forward to this offseason — this coming offseason will be known as ‘the summer of offer sheets.’ It will be.”

It’s not just the Blues’ success that sets the stage.

Another factor is the rising salary cap and the fact that, for the first time, the NHL has set how it will increase for the next three years. It’s projected to rise to $95.5 million for next season, $104 million for 2026-27 and $113.5 million for 2027-28. It should skyrocket from there with new business, a just-announced 12-year, $7.7 billion (USD) Canadian media rights deal with Rogers Communications, a new U.S. media rights deal when ESPN and TNT’s deals expire after the 2027-28 season and further expansion on the horizon.

Forecasting the cap so far out gives teams the ability to plan out future payroll projections with certainty that wasn’t possible in the past, when salary cap figures for the following season were often made official just before free agency.

Additionally, Walsh said, “The UFA market ain’t that hot.”

“There are not a lot of top-end players available as unrestricted free agents this year,” Walsh said. “So many players are locked up on longer-term deals where they’re not going to be available this year and they’re not going to be available next year. But if you’re looking to make your team better, some of the top available players happen to be RFAs, not UFAs.

“And would you rather devote $6, $7, $8 million to a 31-year-old where you have to attach term to that deal? Or would you rather throw that money at a 23- or 24-year-old and have a guy that, if you’re successful, you’re getting him for the prime of his career? That’s what will drive (the increase in offer sheets).”

Fitzgerald agreed: “You’re betting on the upside and future with restricted free agents versus you’re betting on the past with unrestricted free agents.”

So who could be next? According to PuckPedia, 88 of 95 potential restricted free agents this offseason are offer sheet-eligible, prominently including the Minnesota Wild’s Marco Rossi, Toronto Maple Leafs’ Matthew Knies, Edmonton Oilers’ Evan Bouchard, New York Rangers’ K’Andre Miller and Will Cuylle, New York Islanders’ Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov and Buffalo Sabres’ JJ Peterka and Bowen Byram.

Could Matthew Knies or Evan Bouchard sign an offer sheet this offseason? (Leila Devlin / Getty Images)

Peterka will draw lots of trade interest this offseason if the Sabres can’t get a new contract finalized. And if he’s not re-signed by July 1, there’s no doubt he would be an enticing offer-sheet candidate.

Walsh happens to be his agent, but out of respect for the Sabres, his client and the process, he wouldn’t comment specifically about that situation.

“But I have talked to general managers generally about offer sheets this summer, and some general managers have said to me — one in particular (said), ‘My goal this summer is to do an offer sheet,’” Walsh said.

It’ll come as no surprise to Armstrong, though he pointed out that his goal was to add the players — not set a precedent or challenge established business practices.

“I would assume (offer sheets) will be (more prevalent),” he said. “I don’t think you do it to drive the price up. I think you do it because you believe you can get the player. Personally, I think it’s bad business to do it to harm someone. You do it to improve yourself.”

Not that everyone agrees. At the recent GM meetings, The Athletic canvassed GMs on whether they think offer sheets will be more common. There wasn’t a lot of certainty because while, yes, the rising cap will mean more money in the system for teams to sign players to offer sheets, it could also mean teams are in a better position to match.

“I think the majority, if not all, of the teams have an average of $15 million to play with for unrestricted free agents and whatever they’re going to do this summer,” Fitzgerald said. “So I don’t know how teams will get caught with their pants down. If they want to match, they should be able to match.”

“I don’t think the cap affects it,” Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill said. “It might even make it harder. Since the cap’s going up, are you gonna overpay so much to get a guy when you know that it’s probably gonna get matched and you’re just affecting the lay of the land?

“So I don’t know. They’re all situational-based. But it’s a tool that we can all use.”

Added Columbus Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell, who in 2021 as Carolina Hurricanes GM signed Jesperi Kotkaniemi to an offer sheet that the Montreal Canadiens didn’t match, “I don’t know that we’ll see more. … Probably why it was done before is because teams were up against the cap. So if you don’t have that factor, if people want to keep their players, they’ll be able to keep them.”

And Armstrong: “I think with the cap rising that it would be less likely to get a player, but it also depends (on) what teams do on July 1 with the cap rising. You have to hedge your bets on your restricted free agents. That’s the balance.”

As for whether Armstrong’s moves lifted any remaining taboo over offer sheets, GMs continue to debate whether one ever existed.

Unquestionably, though, offer sheets were frowned upon for decades.

In response to seeing Dustin Penner sign a five-year, $21.5 million offer sheet with Edmonton in July 2007, then-Anaheim Ducks GM Brian Burke famously challenged Oilers counterpart Kevin Lowe to a fight. Burke went so far as to call Glen Sather — a mutual friend — to inform him that he would be renting a barn in Lake Placid, N.Y., during that summer’s U.S. junior development camp and giving Lowe the choice of three dates and times that they could throw down.

Ultimately, it never came to that, though NHL commissioner Gary Bettman took the threat seriously enough to intervene.

What angered Burke about the Penner offer sheet was that he believed it would have an inflationary effect on the marketplace — and thought Lowe should have given him a warning that it was coming. He felt that Edmonton had broken an unwritten rule.

“It’s not like it’s forbidden,” Nill said. “There’s a rule that’s there, and some teams use it to their advantage. Some teams it’s worked for. Some it hasn’t. But we’re open to it. Hey, our job as GMs is to do the best for our organization, and that doesn’t matter whether it’s offer sheets or trades or whatever we’re doing. If there’s an opportunity to improve our team, that’s our job to do it.”

The Burke-Lowe war of words didn’t eliminate the practice — the following summer, the Blues and Vancouver Canucks each signed a player off the other’s roster to an offer sheet a week apart, with the Canucks signing David Backes and the Blues retaliating by signing Steve Bernier — but it did set off a period where teams viewed offer sheets as an ineffective way to procure talent.

That point was hammered home in July 2012, when the Nashville Predators’ Shea Weber signed a 14-year, $110 million offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers. Considered a penny-pinching team at the time, there was doubt about whether Predators ownership would willingly fork over the $27 million the contract structure called for Weber to be paid in the first calendar year, especially since it covered a 2012-13 season that would be interrupted by a lockout.

But the Predators matched. That sent a message: If that offer sheet didn’t work, what would?

Hall of Famer Shea Weber signed an offer sheet with the Flyers in 2012. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)

“I don’t think it was ever considered taboo,” Fitzgerald said. “It was just, ‘Is it worth going through all the work with the team when a very high percentage match?’”

The Weber offer sheet came during a stretch in which six straight offer sheets were matched over 14 years between the Penner deal in 2007 and Kotkaniemi’s one-year, $6.1 million contract in 2021, when the Hurricanes lured the former No. 3 pick away from the Canadiens as apparent retribution for a 2019 offer sheet Montreal signed with Sebastian Aho.

Asked if it was retaliation, Waddell insisted to The Athletic, “Not at all. We had him targeted. I tried to trade for him multiple times. Even that day, we were trying. We were talking about a trade that day, and then we couldn’t agree on it, and we made the decision.”

Several of Waddell’s brethren still believe it was retaliation nonetheless — and, indeed, believe that any offer sheet puts a GM at risk for payback.

On the other hand, Fitzgerald said, “Is Edmonton really now going to offer sheet a St. Louis player? I doubt it.”

Fitzgerald also pointed out that while the perception might be that a team is a bad guy for poaching a player, “the player is the one that wants to leave.”

To Fitzgerald’s point, look at Weber in 2012. Less than two weeks after Ryan Suter left Nashville via unrestricted free agency, signing a 13-year, $98 million contract with the Wild, Weber’s offer sheet was designed to torpedo the Predators because he wanted to leave for Philly.

But after the Predators matched a contract that significantly impacted their cap situation, their fans continued to love Weber while booing Suter every time he returned.

Last summer, Fitzgerald admitted that he was worried about an offer sheet with Dawson Mercer, but he trusted agents’ word that Mercer didn’t want to play elsewhere.

“People forget a player has to sign the offer sheet, and it’s usually because he prefers to play somewhere else,” Fitzgerald said.

When the Stars got ahead of the game and recently extended Wyatt Johnston at the same time that they were trading for and re-signing Mikko Rantanen, many speculated that they were worried about Johnston being vulnerable to an offer sheet this summer. Nill said that wasn’t the case — that the sides talked early in the season and were getting closer with discussions during the 4 Nations Face-Off. The fact that agent Andy Scott represents both players allowed Nill to finalize the contracts at the same time.

“It’s one less thing to worry about in the summertime,” Nill said.

There’s one other barrier to consider when thinking about the potential for a “summer of offer sheets,” and as mentioned with the Blues, it’s the draft-pick compensation. A team must have its own picks to send the other way as compensation.

This mechanism has been there since the first offer sheet was tendered in 1986. The original intention was to make it more difficult for clubs to extend offer sheets because when restricted free agency was introduced, teams didn’t favor the ability for other teams to sign away their RFAs. The rule has stuck.

That’s why the Blues had to get their 2026 second-rounder back to offer-sheet Broberg.

PuckPedia has a tracker that shows which teams can sign players to offer sheets at different salaries based on which of their original draft picks they own. The current salary brackets are based on last year’s thresholds. New ones are announced in late June and are based on average salaries across the league.

For instance, take Minnesota: If the Wild wanted to sign a player to an offer sheet between $2,290,458 and $4,580,917 or between $6,871,375 and $9,161,834, they’d have to reacquire their second-round pick from the Predators because they traded it for Gustav Nyquist in February.

To this point, when The Athletic asked Bill Zito for his thoughts on offer sheets at last month’s GM meetings, the Florida Panthers GM joked because he has traded so many draft picks that offer sheets weren’t on his radar “unless they let us throw in used sticks or 2031 draft picks as compensation.”

Zito did add that in his opinion, there’s nothing wrong with offer sheets: “It shouldn’t be taboo. You go to law school, you get trained as a lawyer and you think a certain way. There’s a set of rules, and offer sheets are part of the rules.”

Taboo or not, Walsh believes times are about to change in the NHL. This is a mechanism in the CBA — perhaps even a smarter one than spending a boatload of money on aging unrestricted free agents.

“I look at the NBA and how there was a time when offer sheets in the NBA were taboo, and now you don’t blink an eye when you see one,” Walsh said.

Whatever the future holds, Armstrong is content with what the Blues did.

“They both have played very well for us,” he said of Holloway and Broberg. “They fit in. As much as their play has fit in … we have a whack of players in that same age group, and they’re starting to grow together. You see them spending time together. It’s been a good fit for us.

“So I’m glad we did it. If I had to do it all over again, I would.”

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic, with photos by Scott Rovak and Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

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