As silly season in hockey screeches to a halt, there are still items on NHL teams’ to-do lists as cottage season rolls around.
For some teams, it’s about figuring out how to be cap-compliant ahead of next season, and for others, it’s dealing with some un-signed restricted free agents.
And in the case of Jeff Jackson’s Edmonton Oilers, it coincides with both. According to PuckPedia, they are a hair over $354,000 over the salary cap, and still have to sign RFA’s in forward Dylan Holloway and defenceman Philip Broberg.
Both of whom will likely come in around the $2-$2.5-million mark, which will only further push the Oilers into a difficult cap position ahead of next season. Options for them to get compliant are to trade one of Cody Ceci or Evander Kane, or put the latter on the long-term injured reserve with the sports hernia and/or hip problem he’s reportedly been dealing with.
In the eyes of Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, however, a team could make life even more difficult for the Oilers by signing Broberg to an offer sheet. Here’s what he said on the latest edition of The DFO Rundown:
If I were another team, I’d be trying to offer sheet Philip Broberg. I’d give him six years times $4.5-million bucks… You get a young defenceman who already let you know he was unhappy with his opportunity. (He) made the case in the playoffs that he should’ve been playing all year with the way that he played, now is an important part of your team moving forward and they don’t have the ability to keep him if they get an offer sheet. There’s really no chance to even match that, the surgery you would have to do to make that happen. It would involve Kane LTIR…. that’s lock and key not coming off LTIR.
An offer sheet of $4.5-million on the dot would undoubtedly put the Oilers in a tough position. Jason Gregor noted on the aforementioned podcast that Kane moving to the LTIR, and a trade of Cody Ceci would allow the Oilers to match it, but as Seravalli said, too, it would have to mean Kane would be out for the entirety of the regular season, something that is unknown as a possibility as of the time of writing.
The Oilers, if they chose not to match it, would receive a second-round pick back from whichever team pulled that trigger to do so. As highlighted by CapFriendly, half of the NHL would have the requisite cap space and draft capital to do so: the Anaheim Ducks, the Boston Bruins, the Buffalo Sabres, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Dallas Stars, the Detroit Red Wings, the Los Angeles Kings, the Montreal Canadiens, the Nashville Predators, the New York Islanders, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Seattle Kraken, the St. Louis Blues, the Utah Hockey Club and last but not least, the Winnipeg Jets.
UPDATE JULY 10, 2024: The compensation for Broberg would actually be a first and a third round pick. Any offer sheets that are six or seven years long have the AAV’s averaged over the course of five years. That means an offer sheet with $27-million in compensation over six years would carry a $5.4-million AAV, increasing the compensation.
Broberg has been a much-maligned prospect in the Oilers system for years. He was Ken Holland’s first draft pick as general manager, and it was made at a time when the Oilers had recently lost defenceman Oscar Klefbom to a career-ending shoulder injury. It’s taken time for Broberg to develop, having some early struggles when he arrived in North America, and the Oilers — in all honesty — butchering his development plan.
It led to him requesting a trade last December, and a subsequent assignment to the American Hockey League where he ripped it up, scoring five goals and 38 points in 49 games, playing in all situations for the Bakersfield Condors. He’d return to Edmonton as seasons end playing two solid regular season games at the end of the year, and was inserted into the lineup late in the Western Conference Finals, and all through the Stanley Cup Finals, where he looked like a seasoned veteran, scoring two goals and three points in 10 games, helping Edmonton outscore the opposition 6-2 in 135 five-on-five minutes.
Now, Broberg is clearly in the plans to be a top-four defenceman for the Oilers now and years into the future, and any offer sheet coming his way would put a wrench into Edmonton’s summer.

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.