It’s the dog days of summer and the Edmonton Oilers have been thrown a curveball.

The St. Louis Blues announced on Tuesday morning that they’ve tendered offer sheets to a pair of restricted free agents on the Oilers: Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg.

The Oilers have seven days to decide whether to match St. Louis’ offers or let either player go. Here are the terms of each player’s contract and what Edmonton would receive in return if they opt not to match the offer, per Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff…

Both Holloway and Broberg put together breakout performances during the team’s run to the Stanley Cup Final this spring. Holloway moved up into the top-six forward group while Evander Kane was injured and Broberg took over on the second defensive pairing alongside Darnell Nurse for Cody Ceci.

With Kane expected to start the season on the Long-Term Injured Reserve, the Oilers would have had plenty of salary cap room to sign Holloway and Broberg to one-year contracts, but the Blues saw an opportunity to potentially snag a promising player or two from a team in a financial bind.

As frustrating as it is, this is legal in the NHL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. It’s even something we saw the Oilers do themselves years ago. Following a disastrous 2006-07 season, general manager Kevin Lowe sought to replace Ryan Smyth’s production by signing Thomas Vanek to an offer sheet. The Buffalo Sabres matched so Lowe looked for a team with less cap room. The Anaheim Ducks, who had just won the Stanley Cup, were struggling to sign all of their young forwards, so the Oilers signed Dustin Penner to a five-year, $21.25 million offer sheet.

The Oilers are currently $354,167 over the cap ceiling, per Puck Pedia. Putting Kane on the LTIR gives the team $5.125 million in wiggle room to get Holloway and Broberg signed, but the combined cost of their offer sheets ($6,871,374) will exceed the bonus pool that they’ll have available. Matching both Holloway and Broberg would put Edmonton $7,225,541 over the limit.

That means that the Oilers either need to decide between keeping Holloway or Broberg or they need to find another way to shed salary from their roster. The names who come to mind when considering the latter route are defenders Cody Ceci and Brett Kulak, who cost $3.25 million and $2.75 million against the cap, respectively.

The ideal move, it seems, would be to trade Ceci, who’s set to become an unrestricted free agent after the 2024-25 season. Broberg effectively filled into his spot on the second defensive pairing during the playoffs and dumping the veteran’s contract would ultimately open up the room needed to pay for the youngster’s raise.

Of course, moving Ceci for Broberg doesn’t come without risk. It might cost the Oilers a sweetener to trade Ceci at this stage of the off-season, considering all of the other GMs in the league know that they’re in a desperate situation. Also, Broberg only has 81 games of regular-season experience logging an average of 12:42 per night. A $4,580,917 salary is a significant investment for a player without much experience.