At first, William Nylander’s contract defined the season for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Now, it’s the impending threat of an offer sheet.
Weren’t we done with this already? I thought the baseless hand-wringing about the Leafs’ cap situation ended once Nylander mercifully put pen to paper and everyone could then go back to enjoying their first-place team. Alas, apparently not.
The most pressing topic of discussion in recent days has centred around the concept of offer sheets. Or, more specifically, which of Toronto’s young stars will inevitably be targeted with one.
You remember offer sheets, right? Oh, you don’t? Well, I can’t blame you for that one.
No team has actually used the offer sheet avenue since 2013, when the Calgary Flames failed to poach then-RFA Ryan O’Reilly from the Colorado Avalanche once the Avs matched. In fact, you’d have to travel all the way back to the year 2007, over a decade ago, to find the last time a team declined to match an opposing team’s offer sheet. That specific case happened to centre around Dustin Penner, whose 5-year, $21.5 million offer from the Oilers proved too steep for his current team, the Anaheim Ducks, to counter. And in you recall, this caused Brian Burke to publicly declare his intent to wail on then-Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe in a barn for snagging one of his best players.
Case in point, offer sheets don’t happen. They just don’t. Hockey, as a sport, is generally averse to taking risks, and offer sheeting a rival team’s young star is probably one of the biggest risks you can possibly take.
So, why is everyone freaking out about offer sheets now? And why only about the Leafs?
Clicks, baby! Those sweet, sweet clicks. Anything that discusses either Auston Matthews or Mitch Marner getting poached by an offer sheet is Content Christmas™ for its publisher and you can’t really blame for going with what sells.
But think about it for a moment. The Leafs are far from the only team with an impending RFA headache on their hands.
The Winnipeg Jets need to pay their own trio of prominent RFAs in Patrik Laine, Jacob Trouba and Kyle Connor this summer. Brock Boeser needs a new deal from the Vancouver Canucks as well and the team will need to somehow find a way to fit his raise in with Elias Petersson’s inevitable monster contract two years down the road.
Not to mention, the Calgary Flames hold less than $1 million in projected cap space right now with no notable salary coming off the books on July 1st and both Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett being due for raises over the summer. This opens them up to get absolutely bamboozled by an offer sheet, especially considering how the former’s cap hit is due to land in the $6-$7 million range.
But sure, keep talking about how the Leafs are about to get offer sheeted out the wazoo. As we all know, they are the only ones with any impending RFAs and all 30 other teams have cap space galore.
It doesn’t matter what I think, though. What do you think? Leave your opinion in the comments below to potentially get featured in tomorrow’s follow up piece.
Thanks for reading!