How the Edmonton Oilers can get revenge on the St. Louis Blues for last season’s offer-sheets

The Edmonton Oilers go into this summer again as Stanley Cup runners-up. As good as they were through the first three rounds of the playoffs, they simply weren’t good enough to beat the Florida Panthers. While blame is due to many parties for the loss, two big culprits were on display: the lack of depth at forward and on the blueline, as well as goaltending. The Oilers can look to the St. Louis Blues for both the problem and the solution.

Last summer’s offer sheet debacle was a major issue for this team. The Blues made offers above market value to both Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg. With the Oilers opting not to match on either, both left Edmonton for St. Louis. And while the Oilers did manage to find pieces to fill those voids, including Kasperi Kapanen, Vasily Podkolzin, and John Klingberg all for basically nothing, none were as good as the two that they lost.

This stings. The team would have been so much better with both Broberg and Holloway in the lineup, and had the Oilers been able to pay both what they felt was a fair market price at the time, both would have likely been instrumental in this year’s playoffs. It’s hard to think about the Blues and not want to extract some form of revenge.

How the Edmonton Oilers can get revenge on the St. Louis Blues

The Oilers enter the offseason with nearly $12M in cap room. The only notable player that they have to sign this summer is Evan Bouchard, and while he will command a decent chunk of change, they can easily squeeze him under the cap.

Aside from re-signing Connor McDavid on July 1, as he enters the final year of his deal this season, the Oilers have one year left on both of their current netminders, and will undoubtedly be looking for an upgrade. Stuart Skinner was unable to get the Oilers through the playoffs, with the team turning to Calvin Pickard for stretches of very important hockey. Without him keeping the team in it, this could have been a much earlier elimination than it was. It’s clear that neither is the starter that this team needs.

Enter Joel Hofer. The former fourth-round pick has been quietly excellent playing with Jordan Binnington in St. Louis and is a restricted free agent this summer. In his last three seasons, he has been above a 0.900 save percentage each year while playing on a very average Blues side. However, the Blues have continued to use Binnington as their 1A netminder, turning to him in all seven playoff games on top of more regular season games than Hofer.

Hofer clearly has a lot more to show, but being stuck behind a 31-year-old goalie entering a contract year is not a great position to be in. This is an opportunity for the Oilers to swoop in and sign him to an offer sheet.

How does an offer sheet work?

In its most simple form, any NHL team is able to make an offer to a restricted free agent on another team to tempt them to join their team. If the player opts to sign the offer, the team that owns their rights is given the choice as to whether they want to match that offer or not. If they match, the player stays, but if not, they player goes to the other team on the deal that was offered. In return, the team that loses the player gets compensation from the team that made the offer.

The offer compensation depends on the size of the deal, and can range from nothing to four first-round picks depending on how large of an offer it is. The key caveat is that the team must give their own pick, not a pick in the same round that they acquired from another team.

This table breaks down the offer sheet thresholds: