Stan Bowman Explains Why The Oilers Didn’t Match Offer Sheets On Broberg, Holloway

Stan Bowman Explains Why The Oilers Didn’t Match Offer Sheets On Broberg, Holloway

Stan Bowman is the new GM in Edmonton and it didn’t take very long to get thrown right into the fire after the Blues hit Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway with offer sheets. The Oilers ultimately decided not to match either offer.

Bowman did his best to explain why the Oilers passed on both offer sheets.

"This came down to a business decision, relative to our short-term as well as our long-term viability for our roster with the salary cap."#Oilers GM Stan Bowman spoke to the media today about not matching the Holloway & Broberg offer sheets.@Enterprise | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/Fc5bUNYklR

— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) August 20, 2024

“We took our time and exhausted all opportunities,” Bowman said. “And decided not to match. This came down to a business decision, relative to our short-term as well as our long-term viability for our roster with the salary cap. We moved forward with best moves going into training camp.”

“What we tried to do was to come up with how our team would look under each scenario. What we decided made the most sense from where we were today.”

“With that, we were able to do some other transactions once we decided that we were not going to match the offer sheets.”

“We feel like we’ve been able to accomplish a few things, which gives us a lot of flexibility and options moving forward.”

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I’ll put my own spin on this now. I think not matching on Broberg will prove to be a mistake. It’s why I wrote this post a while ago. Broberg was super impressive during the playoffs and Darnell Nurse played way better when he was his D partner. To just let a young blue liner go like that is crazy to me when you’re already weak in that area. Plus, why did they dump Cody Ceci‘s cap hit if they’re going to match on Broberg? That part is so weird. Wasn’t that the whole point of getting rid of his money?

Bowman claims the Oilers now have flexibility but it’s not really true. The Oilers currently have roughly $950,000 in cap space. What kind of flexibility do you call that? What Edmonton should have done is match Broberg and then worry about what to do once Evander Kane comes off LTIR, which is where he will be for multiple months to start the season.

That’s how I would have played it. Time will tell if they made the right call.

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