Can the Oilers afford to match the offers for Broberg and Holloway? Should they?

Offers are rare in the NHL, so when a team finally hands one out, it often causes a stir in the off-season.

When a team sends out two Bringing it up to a team right away will only make an already tense situation worse.

There have been only 10 tender offers signed in the 20-year salary cap era. Eight of those 10 were between 2006 and 2013, and all but one were matched. But since then, the process has been a snail’s pace. In the last nine offseasons, only two deals have been signed. The first was in 2019 when Montreal tried to poach Sebastian Aho from the Hurricanes. Carolina matched that and got revenge three years later with an offer to (and eventual acquisition of) Jesperi Kotkaniemi.

Since then, it has been virtually silent on the offer front, despite the fact that a lot of talented players have been available in recent summers.

Until Tuesday morning, when the St. Blues caused chaos by discussing not one but two offers for the Edmonton Oilers to consider.

St. Louis has submitted offers for forward Dylan Holloway and defenseman Philip Broberg, leaving the Oilers with two questions: Can the team afford both deals, and should they?

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The Oilers don’t have much cap flexibility. With 13 forwards, six defensemen, two goaltenders and two buyout hits, Edmonton’s collective cap hit is about $88.3 million. According to CapWages, that’s $341,667 more than the $88 million ceiling for the 2024-25 season without two key RFAs signed.

The Oilers will likely get some relief to start the season with Evander Kane and his $5.1 million cap hit headed for long-term injury relief. But Kane’s status is a wild card at this point, and unless the plan is for him to miss the regular season and only be available for the playoffs, putting him on LTIR to open the season is an incomplete solution.

Even if Kane goes on LTIR for the entire season, it won’t be enough to cover the new deals for both Broberg and Holloway, as Edmonton can’t restructure the proposed salaries. The Oilers must match the Blues’ two-year offers, worth $2,290,457 per year for Holloway and $4,580,917 for Broberg.

With Holloway, the Oilers should have expected an offer. Unlike other available RFAs, he doesn’t require a splashy salary or compensation like Lucas Raymond might. Holloway could have landed in the $2,290,458-$4,580-917 range at most, which would have cost a second-round pick. The Blues offered him a salary that kept him $1 lower, meaning the compensation is only a third-round pick in 2025.

At first glance, it might be easy to dismiss Holloway as unimportant. He’s a bottom-six forward who scored just nine points in 38 regular-season games and didn’t have much offensive impact at five-on-five. But that’s not what the Blues (or Oilers) would be betting on. These teams would bet on the potential of a 22-year-old who can find his feet at the NHL level and make a difference, something he has shown in the final phase and in the play-offs.

With more reinforcements in the Oilers’ top six this season, including offseason acquisitions like Viktor Arvidsson, Holloway should have the support to come into form as a difference-making second-liner this year. And that’s something Edmonton may want to prioritize, given the lack of young talent to lean on.

Therefore, the Oilers would have to match the Blues’ offer for Holloway, even if it’s slightly higher than their expected cost. To extend Edmonton at this point in the offseason, Evolving-Hockey was projecting a two-year deal with an AAV of around $1.3 million, which is about $1 million more than their current offer. But that AAV of less than $2.3 million is below his projected market value for each of the next two seasons. So it’s a safe bet that this bridge deal will be cost-effective for Edmonton, even with their cap constraints in mind.

With a contract that puts Edmonton over the cap but keeps them within the 10 percent cushion allowed in the offseason. Since it’s not a huge salary cap weight, management likely won’t have to make any immediate deductions just yet — they can play out the Kane LTIR situation and take steps as the season progresses to balance the books.

With Broberg, it’s not quite as simple. A $4.5 million addition would be a lot harder to navigate.

Like Holloway, Broberg doesn’t have an impactful track record at the NHL level to rely on. The 23-year-old has played just 12 regular-season games this season and appeared in 10 playoff contests. He hasn’t always impressed in those limited samples, making some costly mistakes along the way. But he did give Edmonton a real boost in the playoffs when he was inserted into the lineup. On the biggest stage, he added some puck-moving play to the Oilers’ defense that they’ve been missing outside of their starting pair. And that would appear to earn him a starting role for the 2024-25 season, based on management’s offseason moves (or lack thereof) on defense.

Evolving-Hockey projected a cap hit of less than $900,000 for Broberg on a one-year deal. And that’s a lot closer to his market value at this point in his career. That market value is based on just 81 NHL games over the last three seasons, which isn’t a lot to go off of and includes a lot of shaky results. So it’s not fair to say that it’s indicative of the player he’ll become over the next two years. Still, it’s an expensive jump, which makes this all the more risky for Edmonton.

Any offer the Oilers make for Broberg would be an overpayment. That’s usually the name of the game, because an opponent has to accomplish two things with their offer. First, an opposing general manager has to convince the RFA to sign the contract. Second, they have to put the contract out of reach of their current team. It’s the degree of overpayment that’s an issue here, unlike Holloway’s case. That makes this a trickier dilemma, especially when there’s less defensive depth to replace Broberg.

Management has to decide if Broberg can be worth $4.5 million and what deductions it will take to do so. It has to decide if that’s worth the knock-on effects that matching this deal will have on the Oilers’ deadline cap space, which the team may want to retain to fuel another deep run. And then there are the implications for the second year of this deal to consider.

The Oilers may take a bit of a pay cut in 2025 with James Neal’s buyout, along with Cody Ceci’s contract and a handful of depth forwards. But there are two huge looming raises coming between Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard. So committing $4.5 million, a potential overpayment, to Broberg could be a problem.

The Blues have been very methodical with an offered salary that is $1 below the next tier of compensation. Losing Broberg will only bring back a second-round pick, not a first- and third-rounder. But the salary implications of matching this deal likely trump any compensation concerns, and could cost Edmonton one of their top six defensemen.

The Blues turned up the heat on Edmonton with two deals that threw a wrench into their offseason planning. Instead of targeting big stars who would cost a lot of money in salary and draft pick compensation, St. Louis targeted mid-level players who are more attainable — and now they appear highly likely to add at least one promising player to their roster for the 2024-25 season.

Data via CapFriendly, Evolving-Hockey and CapWages.

(Top photo of Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway: Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images)