Kelly McCrimmon Says Why NHL Teams Don’t Offer Sheet Players More
Why don’t other NHL teams offer sheet rival players? We know that NHL is a sport that has way more honor and inner codes than the Charmin ultra-soft NBA does. Vegas Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon made an appearance on the 32 Thoughts Podcast run by Elliotte Friedman. McCrimmon gave an interesting response to being asked why NHL teams don’t offer sheet players more frequently.
It’s an interesting response. On one hand, you do understand where McCrimmon is coming from. There is a code within the NHL game. Stay out of contract talks with our players and we’ll stay out of contract talks with your players. However, I’m just not sure I’d operate that way if I were running a team.
The most recent example that sticks out in terms of offer sheets has to be when the Canadiens signed Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet. A few years later, Carolina signed Jesperi Kotkaniemi to an offer sheet. The ploy the Carolina was almost used as revenge because Montreal had signed Aho to a sheet two years prior.
What isn’t talked about is Montreal did the right thing and then got Carolina to make a mistake later down the road. Getting Aho in Montreal would have been a game changer. Getting Carolina to make a hilarious mistake on Kotaniemi made it even better. That’s coming from someone who loves watching this Canes team. Let’s just not pretend that the Hurricanes didn’t damage their own team and lost Vincent Trocheck in the process because of this nonsense.
I’m for offer sheets. Put me in charge, I’ll hand them out no problem in the right circumstance. In reality, the NHL should offer sheet more players but given the internal code these executives have, expect it to be more of a rarity.
