An interesting summer that saw the St. Louis Blues sign two of the Edmonton Oilers top prospects could’ve been a whole lot more interesting.
While word leaked out in the summer that there were two other teams considering issuing similar offer sheets to Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, we now know who one of those teams were: the Oilers provincial rival Calgary Flames.
Daily Faceoff’s Jeff Marek reported such Monday on his debut episode of The Sheet, the latest live show and podcast to join The Nation Network:
These two were always going as a package. This was going to be double offershet. Broberg and Holloway were going together, this was going to happen. There were three teams who were prepared to do offer sheets for these players. St. Louis was the preffered candidate, I believe, for both these players, but as we all know, St. Louis had a hard time getting that second round pick back and they ended up getting it from the Pittsburgh Penguins, then they had the compensation and they could check all the boxes and get both players.
But the interesting thing in all of this — two other teams were interested in trying to get all the necessary ingredients to offer sheet Broberg and Holloway. It sound very much like one of the teams was the Calgary Flames… I still don’t know who the third team was. That may remain a white whale for me, we shall see. It sounds very much like Calgary was one of the other teams in pursuit of the offer sheet for Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway.
When you think the Battle of Alberta, when you think about the nastyness and the vitrol between these two teams, my mind right away goes back to the days of the ‘80s when they would compete and one team would win the Stanley Cup one year, and the other team the next. We think about those games and they’d take about four hours to play. You spend more time picking up gloves than announcing the goals, and these are the days of Dave Semenko and Marty McSorely and Don Jackson and Tim Hunter and Jim Peplinski and everybody else going at it on the ice. Legitimate hatred between Calgary and Edmonton, the fan base didn’t get along, fights in the stands, et cetra. And we fast forward to the summer of 2024, and that feud could’ve been played out with offer sheets. Just consider what that would’ve done to the Battle of Alberta, and if there would’ve been anymore pressure on Edmonton to try and maneouver their player personnell in order to match the offer, knowing that it was the provincial rival.
St. Louis’ offer sheets were right on the threshold of compensatory value, seeing Broberg accept a two-year, $4,580,917-million per year offer, and Holloway a two-year, $2,290,457-million per year offer. The Oilers received compensation of a second-round pick for Broberg and a third for Holloway, while they also swung a deal with the Blues to also receive prospect defenceman Paul Fischer, who was invited to the USA’s World Junior camp, as well as third-round picks in 2023 and 2028.
Edmonton ended up swinging deals to acquire winger Vasily Podkolzin from the Vancouver Canucks, who has fit in the Oilers’ top-six well, and defenceman Ty Emberson from the San Jose Sharks, who has begun to find his way on their blue line.
Holloway and Broberg have seen early success in St. Louis. The former has scored seven goals and 13 points in 25 games, and is on a three-game scoring streak in which he’s racked up three goals and two assists. Broberg, meanwhile, was off to a red-hot start before suffering a knee injury, which he just returned from this weekend. In his first dozen games pre-injury, he scored two goals and nine points, playing nearly 20 minutes per night on a record-setting run. In his return last Saturday, Broberg logged 24 minutes and eight seconds of ice-time, the second-highest of his career.