Despite a surprising move to sign two young restricted free agents to offer sheets, the relationship between Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman and St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong appears to be fine.
“No, I think things are fine,” Bowman told Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. “I’ve known Doug a long time. He’s a very bright guy, a good person. I think sometimes more is made out of that.
He was trying to do what he could to make his team better. Once you get past the surprise of it, and you then roll your sleeves up and get to work on what you want to do, I don’t think there’s any value in holding grudges. I mean, what good is going to come out of that?”
Speaking on TSN’s OverDrive show, Bowman was asked about Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, two players that the St. Louis Blues signed to offer sheets. Bowman noted that he knew the ballpark of how much Leon Draisaitl wanted on his extension, and projecting that contract with the contracts of the two departing players, he noted that “there was just no scenario where [matching the offer sheets] would work. It would require several other moves, moving out other players off our roster that we felt didn’t make sense.”
Broberg was selected eighth overall in the 2019 draft by the Oilers. Despite being a high pick, Broberg has only played 81 regular season games over the past three seasons, along with 20 postseason games. Now, half those postseason games came during the Oilers run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals this June, and admittedly, it’s the best he’s looked in the National Hockey League.
However, the Blues offered him a two-year, $9.16 million deal ($4.58 million cap hit), far too much for a contending team to give to an unproven defenceman. Still, the Oilers freed up cap room by trading Cody Ceci and a pick to the San Jose Sharks for defenceman Ty Emberson.
As for Holloway, the 22-year-old scored six goals and nine points in 38 regular season games, missing time with a knee injury that was suffered in a fluke fall. The winger returned to the Oilers full-time in mid-April, scoring three goals and five points in six games. He earned an opportunity alongside Leon Draisaitl in the postseason, where he scored five goals and seven points in 25 postseason games.
Once again, though, the Oilers declined to match his two-year, $4.58 million ($2.29 million AAV) deal the Blues offered him. Instead, they traded a 2025 fourth-round pick to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for Vasily Podkolzin. He went two picks after Broberg in 2019, and had 14 goals and 26 points in his rookie season back in 2021-22, but has struggled the last two seasons.
Although the Oilers freed up cap days before they had to make a decision on whether or not to match the offer sheets, it never seemed like they had any intentions to do so as Evan Bouchard and Connor McDavid have upcoming extensions, along with the already signed Leon Draisaitl.
