The Toronto Maple Leafs may be tempted to enter into the Offer Sheet game, but they should remember its a high-risk game with terrible rewards.
People who cover the NHL constantly write about offer sheets, but in the NHL they are rarely employed. The Toronto Maple Leafs have not been involved in one in years. The last one I remember them having anything to do with was when they tried to steal Mattias Ohlund from Vancouver in the 90s.
Every once in a while, a team gets involved in the offer sheet game and that prompts everyone else to consider if there team could use this strategy.
As for as the Toronto Maple Leafs go, they can’t, and it’s almost always a dumb strategy.
The Blues offer-sheeted two Oilers this week, with, one assumes, the idea of landing at least one of them. The problem is, the players they offered contracts to aren’t that good.
Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway are good players. But they are not star players and getting them won’t make too much of a difference in the Blues’ fortunes this upcoming season.
If the offer-sheet goes through for Broberg, the Blues get a second-pairing guy for two years at $4.5 million per year. He won’t ever be a star player and it’s unlikely he’s going to outperform the contract. If the contract was longer, inflation would perhaps give the Blues a few team-friendly years, but it’s for two years. This is a dumb move and a waste of time because what Broberg gives you is better than you can get from your best AHL player, but not $3.5 million better, and therefore its a bad value-move and that can’t be overstated in a salary cap league.
The Blues, should they land Holloway, at least have a chance to make this worthwhile. There is a chance, albeit a small one, that Holloway becomes a star player. He could outplay the $2+ the Blues would pay him, but since it’s only a two-year offer, it’s unlikely to pay huge dividends.
The number-one rule in a salary cap league is to not overpay mid-range talent, and the Blues just put on a master-class in what not to do. There is a reason teams don’t use offersheets very often, and that is because most of the time the process is just used to overpay players who do not need to be overpaid.
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