Offer sheets aren’t commonplace in today’s NHL, and that’s what made Tuesday’s news of the St. Louis Blues tendering ones to Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg so surprising.
Since the salary cap era entered in 2005-06, there have only been 10 offer sheets issued ahead of this pair, with only two of them not being matched.
One of those offer sheets saw the San Jose Sharks try and snag defenceman Niklas Hjalmarsson from the then-Stan Bowman-led Chicago Blackhawks, tendering a deal that would result in them matching the four-year, $3.5-million AAV deal. The deal accounted for 5.94 percent of the salary cap, above Broberg’s $4,580,917 offer sheet, which accounts for 5.21 percent of the cap.
Then 23 years old, Hjalmarsson was coming out of his entry-level contract, fresh off a season in which he played in 77 games, scoring two goals and 17 points for the Blackhawks. Chicago was coming off their first win of their Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews-led dynasty, and Hjalmarsson played a big role in that, appearing in 22 games, scoring a goal and eight points, while munching 21 minutes per night.
The Sharks, meanwhile, were fresh off some success of their own. The 2009-10 season saw them win the Pacific Division for the third year in a row, making it all the way to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2003-04, ultimately getting swept by Chicago in four games. They must’ve liked what they saw from the defenceman, who scored two assists and was a +3 over those four games.
And so days into the NHL Free Agency period opening, the Sharks sent the offer sheet — one that would’ve seen Chicago get back a first-round and third-round pick in return.
“We feel Niklas is a top-three defenseman in the National Hockey League,” then Sharks general manager Doug Wilson said at the time. “We saw his abilities firsthand in the playoffs last season and he was an important piece of a Stanley Cup-winning team. He is a solid player that would be a good fit on our team now and in the future.”
It didn’t take long for the Blackhawks to match the offer, as three days for Bowman’s Blackhawks to match the offer.
“Niklas was a big part of our success last year and he’s a part of our core that’s going to be together for a long time,” he said, adding the offer sheet was a surprise. “I’m happy for him. He’s a quiet leader among our defensive group. I think he got overshadowed because we have some other superstars there, but he was really effective for us all year long. He’s only going to get better — he’s 23-years-old.”
Now, early into his job with the Oilers, Bowman finds himself at a similar impasse where he has to make a tough decision about a 23-year-old defenceman who wound up playing a big role in the playoffs.
Chicago at the time was in a cap crunch, and tough decisions were made. Goaltender Antti Niemi had gone to arbitration that summer, getting awarded a $2.75-million contract that the Blackhawks chose not to match, below their offer of $2-million. With a $59.4-million salary cap at the time, that money was a difference maker.
But he wasn’t the only one shed from that Cup-winning team: Dustin Byfuglien, Kris Versteeg, Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager, Adam Burish, Marty Reasoner and Brent Sopel, all by way of trade or walking into free agency.
Bowman won’t have to lose that number of players to get the Oilers cap-compliant, but he and the organization will decide whether they want to match, or decline to match the offer sheets.
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.
