Should We Be Afraid of an Offer Sheet?

Did you guys hear? Leon Draisaitl’s ELC ends this year and as of July 1st, he becomes a Restricted Free Agent for the first time in his career. This means a lot of things. It means Drai is now graduating out of his beginner shorts and is putting on his big boy pants. This summer, he will sign his first big contract of his NHL career which is really exciting, right? Unfortunately, along with the responsibility of wearing big boy pants in the NHL, Leon Draisaitl also makes himself eligible to be offered sheet’d. Offered a sheet? Offer sheeted? 

Yes, offer sheeting any player in the league is about as big of a slap-in-the-face (for lack of other inappropriate words) to a GM as there is. The concept includes offering an RFA a contract where the team owning the player has to match the offer. If they can’t match the offer, the team making the original offer has to cough up some draft picks based on the dollar value of the offered salary. I think Draisaitl’s contract this summer will fall between $7-8M AAV. This means, according to the CBA, a Draisaitl offer sheet would more than likely fall in between $7.8M – $9.8M AAV. The penalty this year to offer that amount to a player is two first-round picks, a second, and a third. That is some hefty compensation, which is why offer sheets are super-rare and also dumb.

Who in the right mind would offer sheet Draisaitl? Someone with a lot of money floating around, that’s who. Arizona? Montreal? There are a couple teams out there with a lot of cap space moving forward with not a lot of players to sign. HOWEVER, it’s still a huge risk to offer sheet anybody.

The key piece of information to this whole puzzle is that Chiarelli would never let anyone take Draisaitl away from us. We have the cap space to match nearly anything anyone throws at us and if we can’t afford to match, I guarantee Chia will fight somebody over it. Hell, I’ll fight somebody over it. Imagine the league-wide – no wait, WORLD-wide embarrassment you’ll have when your offer sheet gets shut down.

So to answer my first question, no I don’t think we should be afraid of an offer sheet. Leon would also have to agree to the contract and we all know Edmonton is the best place to play at the moment. Do you think anyone would/could offer sheet Leon Draisaitl?  Let me know in the comments.