So, yeah, about those doldrums we talked about yesterday. It seems the NHL woke up from a summer nap on the hammock yesterday and got around to doing some things. By the end of the day we had a couple of trades, some offer sheets, and the news that Jeff Vinik was in the process of selling his majority stake in the Tampa Bay Lightning. Not bad for a random Tuesday in August.
Things started off innocently enough as the St. Louis Blues and Pittsburgh Penguins swapped some draft picks [NHL.com]. The only odd thing about a straight picks-for-picks trade is the timing. These are the types of deals that you usually only see during the draft itself. The key piece of this deal ended up being the 2025 second-round pick that St. Louis re-acquired in the deal.
The Blues had originally sent that to Pittsburgh as a sweetener to take Kevin Hayes and his cap hit off of their books. Why was it important for them to have their own second -round pick back? Well, let’s delve into the offer sheet compensation guidelines (RIP Cap Friendly)
The rule that is the most germane to this discussion is that the pick needed for compensation has to be your own. You can’t use another team’s pick that you acquired in a previous deal as compensation if you sign a team’s restricted free agent. Of course, in order for this to be relevant, that would require a general manager actually offer-sheeting a RFA, and outside of Carolina, that just doesn’t happen, right?
Wrong.
Doug Armstrong took a look at his team and a look at the Edmonton Oilers cap situation and realized that he could add two former first-round picks to his roster for just a second and third round picks. In a nice, tidy bit of cap management, the league announced that Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg had agreed to two-year contracts from the Blues [Oilers Nation]. Holloway’s new contract has an AAV of $2,290,457 which require compensation of a third-round pick while Broberg’s $4,580,917 requires that second-round pick St. Louis had just re-acquired.
The move forces new Edmonton GM Stan Bowman to make a big decision. He has seven days from the announcement to decide if he wants to match, let the players go for the stated compensation, or work out another deal with St. Louis (the Phil Esposito/Chris Gratton solution). As we talked about briefly yesterday, Edmonton is already hamstrung in regards to their salary cap, and matching both offers would force them to deal another player even if they manage to LTIR Evander Kane for the entire season.
The delicious part of the deal being two years, is that even if Bowman can figure out how to make this season work, the contracts would throw a big wrench into his 2025-26 plans which include having to sign Leon Draisaitl, who will be an unrestricted free agent, and Evan Bouchard, a RFA due a big raise on his current salary.
If there was ever a lesson in getting your business done early in the off-season, this is it.
After turning a 2026 fifth-round pick into a 2025 third-round pick, the Penguins weren’t done on the trade market as they helped another team facing a RFA-related cap Crunch by picking up Cody Glass from Nashville for Jordan Frasca. Nashville also threw in a 2025 third-round pick and a 2026 sixth-round pick for the trouble [Pensburgh]. As the linked article pointed out, Glass struggled a lot in Nashville last season, but had a 35-point season in 2022-23 and is still relatively young at 25 years-old.
Nashville freed up $2.5 million in cap space with the deal which gives them just over $3 million to sign Philip Tomasino and Jusso Parssinen. [PuckPedia]. It was a deal that helps out both teams as Pittsburgh picks up some offensive depth as well as some future picks as they start to plan for the post Crosby, Malkin, Letang world, while Nashville finds room to re-sign a couple of 23 year-olds who figure to be part of their current plans.
While all of that was going on, news spread that Jeff Vinik was starting to plan for his future as well. It appears the greatest owner in Lightning history has started the process to eventually relinquish his majority stake in the team [Raw Charge]. From the reports, he will be in charge for years to come and it’s likely to be a staged sell as Doug Ostrover gains shares over several years.
All-in-all a pretty nice day of news for the NHL.
