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Oilers choose not to match Blues' offer sheets for Broberg and Holloway
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    Oilers choose not to match Blues’ offer sheets for Broberg and Holloway

    The St. Louis Blues‘ bold double-offer-sheet play has paid off.

    The Edmonton Oilers will not match the offer sheets given to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, allowing both players to join the Blues, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported and the teams confirmed Monday.

    Last week, the Blues tendered offer sheets to Broberg (two years, $9.16 million) and Holloway (two years, $4.58 million).

    The Oilers will receive a 2025 second-round pick for Broberg and a 2025 third-round pick for Holloway as compensation.

    On the heels of the announcement, the Blues traded a third-rounder in 2028 and prospect Paul Fischer to the Oilers for future considerations.

    The Oilers made a pair of moves on Sunday to add replacements for the two players. First, they acquired forward Vasily Podkolzin from the Canucks, then they traded Cody Ceci to the Sharks for defenceman Ty Emberson.

    Despite backfilling for the departing players, the Oilers are still losing two of their more successful recent draft picks just as Broberg and Holloway are beginning to earn full-time roles in the NHL.

    Broberg, 23, has played 81 career games for the Oilers over the last three seasons, registering two goals and 13 points. He appeared in just 12 regular-season games last year but skated in 10 playoff games. Edmonton selected the defenceman eighth overall in the 2019 NHL Draft.

    Holloway, who turns 23 next month, has appeared in 89 career games with Edmonton, scoring nine goals and 18 points while also registering seven points during the team’s run to the 2024 Stanley Cup Final. The right winger was selected 14th overall by the Oilers in the 2020 NHL Draft.

    It has been a busy off-season for the Oilers as they try to build off a season in which they fell one win short of winning the Stanley Cup. Since then, the team signed Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, Jeff Skinner, Corey Perry, Josh Brown and Viktor Arvidsson to free-agent contracts on July 1 and traded Ryan McLeod to the Sabres for top prospect Matt Savoie. With Broberg’s and Holloway’s contracts now dealt with, the focus for the Oilers will be negotiating a new contract with Leon Draisaitl and sorting out surgery and potential LTIR for Evander Kane.

    The Blues have missed the playoffs for two straight seasons. The additions of Broberg and Holloway will complement a budding core of players that features Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Jake Neighbours, Brayden Schenn and Pavel Buchnevich up front, as well as Colton Parayko on defence and Jordan Binnington in goal.

    The Blues also added Radek Faksa, Ryan Suter, Mathieu Joseph and Pierre-Olivier Joseph earlier this summer.

    In order to tender the offer sheets, the Blues made a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins last week to re-acquire their second-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft and acquire Pittsburgh’s fifth-round selection in 2026. In exchange, the Penguins received St. Louis’ second-round pick in 2026 and Ottawa’s 2025 third-round selection, which was acquired in the deal that sent Mathieu Joseph to the Blues.

    The last time any NHL team made an offer sheet was in 2021, when the Carolina Hurricanes signed Jesperi Kotkaniemi to a one-year, $6.1-million deal. The Montreal Canadiens did not match and received the Hurricanes’ first- and third-round picks in the 2022 NHL Draft.

    In the salary-cap era, only two offer sheets have been signed and not matched. The other instance was in 2007, when Dustin Penner went from the Anaheim Ducks to the Oilers.

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    The Edmonton Oilers made a surprising decision this week when they chose not to match the offer sheets extended by the St. Louis Blues for top prospects Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway. The move has left many fans and analysts scratching their heads, wondering why the Oilers would let go of two promising young players.

    Broberg, a defenseman, was selected by the Oilers in the first round of the 2019 NHL Draft and has shown great potential in his development since then. Holloway, a forward, was also a first-round pick for the Oilers in 2020 and has been touted as a future star in the league.

    The offer sheets from the Blues were reportedly quite lucrative, with both players being offered substantial contracts that the Oilers were not willing to match. While the exact details of the offers have not been disclosed, it is clear that the Blues were willing to pay top dollar to secure the services of Broberg and Holloway.

    Many fans are questioning the Oilers’ decision to let go of two highly-touted prospects, especially considering the team’s need for young talent to bolster their roster. However, some analysts believe that the Oilers may have other plans in mind for their future roster construction and felt that they could not justify matching the Blues’ offers for Broberg and Holloway.

    It remains to be seen how this decision will impact the Oilers’ roster moving forward, but one thing is certain: the team will need to find new ways to fill the void left by the departure of two promising young players. Only time will tell if this was a wise decision for the Oilers or if they will come to regret letting go of Broberg and Holloway.