Who’s the Larger Loss: Dylan Holloway or Philip Broberg?
The Edmonton Oilers were one win away from historically winning the Stanley Cup. Nevertheless, Edmonton fell to the Florida Panthers in Game 7, and the true work began only a number of days later.
With Ken Holland now not the overall manager, CEO Jeff Jackson brought back Adam Henrique, Corey Perry, and Mattias Janmark and added Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson.
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The Oilers were already up against the salary cap, but teams can exceed it by 10 percent within the offseason. The 2 major priorities were finding a GM and increasing Leon Draisaitl.
Jackson hired Stan Bowman, who has made it a priority to sign Draisaitl to an extension. Nevertheless, that left players like Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg exposed to the offer sheet as restricted free agents.
There have been reports that these deals needed to be accomplished in January but weren’t. Now, the Oilers find themselves in a bind as they give the impression of being to return to the Stanley Cup Final and finish their story.
Edmonton Oilers Reporter Ryan Rishaug joined Sarah Davis on TSN SportsCentre to debate the St. Louis Blues’ offer sheets to Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg and who may very well be the larger loss for the Oilers.
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Sarah Davis: “And you furthermore may got to wonder, if the Oilers were to lose one or each of those players, how much is that going to harm this current group, Ryan?”
Ryan Rishaug: “It’s an awesome query. It hurts. I mean, to place it into perspective, Dylan Holloway was penciled in for me as a third-line left winger on this team who had the chance to challenge her top six minutes upfront. Phillip Broberg would have been penciled in as a third-pairing defenseman who had the chance to challenge for second-pairing minutes.
They’re the highest two young players within the organization, each were able to push for more time at an even bigger bite, at an inexpensive salary, and that’s what really hurts them, losing good players who’re going to be at reasonable dollar figures this yr. So I feel no disrespect to Dylan Holloway, he was excellent within the playoffs. I feel Philip Broberg probably can be the larger lack of the 2.
To me, this player stepped in on the most important stage within the Stanley Cup Final and showed he is prepared. So it will be a loss if either considered one of these two players were gone. But Sarah, I do need to say, I mean, the Oilers put themselves in this case in quite a lot of ways. I don’t think either of those players have been handled particularly well over the past couple of seasons under Ken Holland and Jay Woodcroft.
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I feel with good young players, they either need to grasp why they’re not within the NHL and have a really clear development plan in place where they’re getting a lot of minutes, or they should be within the NHL with a really clear development plan.
And I feel at times, these two players were left hanging and floating with an unclear plan, and I feel that caused problems, and the Oilers are where they’re right away in an actual tough cap crunch.”
Davis: “Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what the Oilers do over the subsequent few days. But prior to Tuesday, only 10 offer sheets had ever been signed within the salary cap era, only two of those weren’t matched, so we’ll see Ryan, thanks for this.”
It’s going to be interesting to see how Bowman and the Oilers handle this case moving forward.