The offer sheet saga in St. Louis with the Blues shocked the hockey world for a week, and it drew to a close when the Edmonton Oilers decided not to match the offer sheets to both Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg.
Offer sheets have been rarely used in the NHL, and general managers have usually considered this to be taboo, and often are viewed as grounds for retaliation, even if they’re not successful. In the Blues’ case, they didn’t snag just one young player away from the Oilers; they signed two at once.
The two of them will enter into two-year contracts with the Blues. Broberg’s deal carries a total value of $9.16 million for a $4.58 million cap hit, while Holloway’s has a total value of $4.58 million for a $2.29 million cap hit. They will then become restricted free agents with arbitration rights upon their contracts’ expiration.
For declining to match the offer sheets, the Oilers will receive the Blues’ 2025 second and third round picks as compensation. St. Louis previously traded away next year’s second rounder, but re-acquired it from the Pittsburgh Penguins minutes before they announced they offer sheeted Holloway and Broberg.
Blues Land Two Young Middle-Line Players
While the forward core in St. Louis is good, it’s not great, and the defensive core is led by three declining veterans with cap hits of $6.5 million each. Holloway and Broberg won’t fix these cores instantly, but they are talented in their own rights, having played in significant supporting roles to get the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final. They both provide a spark for the Blues, and the team needed this in a big way.
More impressive is that the Blues didn’t give up a first round pick of their own while signing two former first round picks. In doing so, they can insert them into the lineup to go on a competitive retool. Doug Armstrong will have to continue to find value where he gets it, though Holloway and Broberg joining the young core led by Robert Thomas, Jordan Kyrou, Jake Neighbours, Jimmy Snuggerud, Scott Perunovich, and Dalibor Dvorsky is intriguing. However, it doesn’t come without risks.
While Holloway’s $4.58 million contract isn’t more than what a lot of people were expecting on his next contract, nobody expected that $9.16 million through two years on Broberg’s contract. The Oilers might have had a chance to match the Holloway contract, but the Broberg one doesn’t really make sense. It’s reasonable that the Blues gambled on Broberg, given they had more than $2 million in cap space before they place Torey Krug on the LTIR.
Philip Broberg’s Up-And-Down Career
Broberg was the 8th overall pick in the 2019 Draft after he dominated that year’s U18 World Championship, named as the tournaments’ best defenseman while winning a gold medal for Sweden. He wasn’t, however, able to transition that into a full-time NHL role then. He continuously bounced between the Oilers and their AHL affiliate, the Bakersfield Condors, thus the Oilers were not willing to give him a contract that pays him at least $4 million annually.
After playing a career-high 46 games in the 2023 season, the 2024 campaign, outside of getting slotted into the lineup for the Oilers in the West Conference Final and Stanley Cup Final, is rather forgettable. He had 12 appearances in the regular season, averaging 11:37 per game, the shortest average time on ice he had since making his NHL debut three years ago. He was a stout two-way presence in the AHL, where he had five goals and 38 points in the past season in Bakersfield, doing that in 49 games. His 0.78 points per game was 4th in the AHL among defenders with at least 15 games played.
He did play 10 games in May and June, getting a top-four spot next to Darnell Nurse, averaging 15:48 per game. He responded well, with three points and a +8 rating, but he did not have good shot metrics. The eye test, however, showed that he was playing with more confidence, despite getting bumped to his weak side to slot next to Nurse.
In St. Louis, what is already a logjam on the left side of the defensive core became even more of a logjam, with the defensive depth chart on Broberg’s side being a toss-up of him, Perunovich, Pierre-Olivier Joseph, Nick Leddy, and Ryan Suter. There’s also a huge possibility that Krug misses the entire 2025 season if he undergoes surgery to address his pre-arthritic conditions on his left ankle. If he sits out for the season, that opens the possibility for Broberg to play top-four minutes come opening night with a strong showing in training camp.
Holloway’s Rise to the NHL
Holloway has a similar story to Broberg. He was selected 14th overall a year after the Draft were Broberg was selected. He had a standout sophomore season with the University of Wisconsin, racking up 35 points in just 23 games, and was named to the Big Ten conference’s First All-Star Team and was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award for being the top collegiate player. It wasn’t enough for him to avoid assignments to Bakersfield.
However, he did get more experience in the NHL, having played 89 games combined in the last two seasons. He’s a safer bet to be an impact piece for the Blues. He was buried deep in the Oilers’ forward depth chart, and he had limited opportunities to move higher in the lineup, which limited his usage to just 10:21 of average time on ice. That resulted in his career high being at nine goals and 18 points.
In the same case as Broberg on the defensive core, the Blues’ below average depth at the forward core gives Holloway a nice chance to get a top nine role. He could be utilized either at the left wing side or at center, especially in a wide open competition with other depth players like Alexandre Texier, Mathieu Joseph, Alexey Toropchenko and Kasperi Kapanen.
In getting both Holloway and Broberg, Armstrong is prioritizing a youth movement in St. Louis, which is also the reasoning behind picking up cost-effective depth pieces like Joseph and Texier to boost a roster that has fallen into a competitive retool.
The Oilers’ Cap Issues and Compensation
Edmonton backed themselves up in a corner with the free agency spending spree this offseason, where they banked on reasonable contracts with Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson, and allocated more of their salary cap situation in keeping Adam Henrique, Connor Brown, Mattias Janmark and Corey Perry, which left very little wiggle room for Holloway and Broberg.
The Oilers have generally been subpar defensively during the “McDrai” era, and seeing Broberg’s cap hit, matching the contract never really made that much sense. $4.58 million per year for an unproven defenseman is way too much, especially when the Oilers needed a right-shot defenseman to replace Cody Ceci, which they accomplished when they traded Ceci and a 2025 third round pick to the San Jose Sharks for Ty Emberson.
Holloway is a much different story. If the Oilers signed the 30+ year old forwards they added in the offseason, and they knew it would result in them losing Holloway for a third round pick, would they still get the benefit of the doubt? Technically, they still had enough cap space to match the offer sheet, but that would require them placing Evander Kane on the LTIR, which would prevent them from getting any cap space. Plus, it should be monitored how Arvidsson’s two-year, $4 million AAV contract works out and to see if it is worth the promising Holloway head to the Gateway City.
Nonetheless, the path to complying with the NHL’s salary cap becomes clearer with the pickups of Emberson and Vasily Podkolzin. However, they are left with a few options in submitting a cap compliant opening night roster with at least one healthy extra.
The Replacements for Holloway and Broberg
What can be seen with Podkolzin is a potential Holloway replacement. He was a controversial pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, though he did round out a loaded top 10 after he fought his way into KHL ice time. He stayed in Russia for two seasons after his Draft selection, continuing to grow into a KHL role before moving into a middle-six role with the Canucks. While he put up 14 goals and 26 points in 79 games in his rookie season in 2022, he struggled to hold onto that scoring in the years since, totaling just nine points in his last 58 games. He did well enough in the AHL to earn occasional call-ups to the NHL, but not enough to inspire confidence.
It could change in Edmonton. He has plenty of skill in his KHL career, but couldn’t instill much tempo to his offense. That’s what the Oilers do best. Holloway didn’t get a lot of ice time when seeking to establish his footing, but the Oilers leaned more towards shoot-first forecheckers, such as Arvidsson and Connor Brown. Podkolzin has a similar frame to Holloway, but has a more physical game to his edge. This is a good opportunity for him to start over.
Ceci, despite constantly getting criticism, was an anchor of the top four for the Oilers in the last three seasons, averaging 20 minutes of total ice time and more penalty kill time than any other Oiler last year. He notoriously was the defensive partner next to Darnell Nurse, which made for high highs and low lows in Edmonton with both on the ice. This opens the door for the incoming Emberson to step in.
Multiple teams showed interest in Emberson previously. He played the first 30 games of his NHL career with the Sharks last season, putting up 10 points and showing value as a shutdown defenseman on a struggling roster. A lower-body laceration in February cut his rookie season short. With him in Edmonton, he has the chance to grow his game even more on the right side of the defensive core.
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