When all else fails, blame the guy who isn’t around anymore.
With the Edmonton Oilers over the salary cap ceiling in the middle of August, the St. Louis Blues tendered offer sheets to two of the team’s restricted free agents. Defenceman Philip Broberg signed a two-year deal worth $4,580,917 annually and forward Dylan Holloway signed a two-year contract worth $2,290,457 per season.
The Oilers don’t currently have the salary cap room to match both of these offers, so they’ll either need to let one of Broberg and Holloway go or they’ll need to find another way to shed some money. Though this is a frustrating challenge to be given late in the off-season, the Oilers were certainly aware of the possibility of an offer sheet and Blues general manager Doug Armstrong hinted about doing so months ago.
While talking about the offer sheets on Oilers Now on Tuesday, Bob Stauffer reported that Ken Holland and the team’s front office were “instructed” during the season to get both players signed to contract extensions.
“Sometimes you have to be ahead of the curve. I can 100 per cent guarantee you that upper management, Ken Holland, the general manager at that time, as far back as December and January, was instructed — instructed at the top levels of the Oilers organization — to get Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg signed to contract extensions, especially in the month of January when both players were in the minors.”
There’s no reason to doubt the information that Stauffer is providing here, which is that CEO Jeff Jackson pushed for Ken Holland and his front office to get both impending restricted free agents signed to new contracts during the season. The problem is that we’re only playing armchair general manager rather than armchair agent here.
In December and January, Holloway was on the shelf because of a knee injury suffered in November and he only had one goal over 14 games. Broberg was playing in the American Hockey League and the young defender had been granted permission to seek a change of scenery.
From the team’s perspective, getting two top prospects signed to cheap extensions while they’re struggling to establish themselves at the NHL level would obviously be ideal. But from the agent’s perspective, there’s no reason to rush into a new contract given the situation.
Both players still had plenty of runway left in the season to prove themselves and they ultimately used the opportunity presented in the playoffs to raise their value around the league. Broberg and Holloway will now get to go through their RFA years with much higher base salaries than they would have if they had agreed to deals worth around $1-$1.5 million back in December or January.
If Jackson was urging Holland to sign both of these players during the season, it should have been one of his top priorities after taking over in late June considering how they performed in the playoffs. Again, this is a frustrating situation for the Oilers, but it’s unfair to simply point the blame in one specific direction.
