Every offseason, NHL general managers are given a series of avenues to improve their rosters for the upcoming season. They can land top prospects in the draft, pursue trades with other teams, or try to sign free agents off the open market. Every once in a while, it comes together for a whopper of a deal like the P.K. Subban-Shea Weber swap a year ago.
NHL teams’ unwillingness to use offer sheets on restricted free agents remains puzzling
It’s been years since the last offer sheet was signed in the NHL. What are teams afraid of?
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But now that we’re nearing the start of August, it appears that NHL GMs are once again forgoing one of the options afforded to them when it comes to building an advantage over their competitors: offer sheets.
Offer sheets for restricted free agents are usually brought up early in the summer as a “Will this finally be the year they happen?” sort of thing. Then we hit this time of the offseason and remember that offer sheets in the NHL are about as common as collective bargaining negotiations that go according to plan.
Restricted free agency isn’t supposed to be a one-sided affair like that. Players are supposed to be able to sign contract offer sheets from other teams. The restricted part comes in with the fact that the team holding an RFA’s rights can match any offer sheet they have signed. In this way, both sides are given some leverage, rather than entry-level contracts, where the team holds all the cards, or unrestricted free agency, where the player does.
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But it’s become hard for players to wield that leverage as restricted free agents because nobody uses offer sheets anymore. The Shea Weber situation happened five years ago. The most recent to be signed was by Ryan O’Reilly with the Calgary Flames in 2013. The Avalanche matched the two-year, $10 million deal.
It’s been nearly a decade since the Oilers landed Dustin Penner with a five-year offer sheet, the last time an RFA actually left a team through the system. The Ducks got first-, second-, and third-round picks in exchange for declining to match the contract.
Now those days are long gone. It’s late July, and big names such as Ryan Johansen, David Pastrnak, Leon Draisaitl, Alexander Wennberg, and Mikael Granlund remain without deals. Here’s what it would cost a team in terms of draft picks to sign away an RFA this summer:
2017 NHL RFA compensation
Average annual value | Compensation |
|---|---|
| $1,295,571 or less | Nothing |
| $1,295,571 to $1,962,968 | Third-round pick |
| $1,962,968 to $3,925,975 | Second-round pick |
| $3,925,975 to $5,888,960 | First- and third-round picks |
| $5,888,960 to $7,851,948 | First-, second-, and third-round picks |
| $7,851,948 to $9,814,935 | Two first-, one second-, and one third-round picks |
| Over $9,814,935 | Four first-round picks |
So if you’re a team with tons of cap space this summer, you could conceivably try to sign a young superstar like Johansen, Pastrnak, or Draisaitl to a deal worth up to $7.85 million per year, and it’d only cost you first-, second-, and third-round picks. Worst-case scenario, the other team matches and you’re back at square one.
It begs the question of why nobody has tried that given how difficult it is to acquire young players of that caliber today, particularly for an improving team that’s not expecting those picks to be high in the draft. Yes, a big contract and several picks is a high cost, but that’s just how the business operates.
The only RFA this summer who really seemed to hit a home run was Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov, and that’s not a coincidence. He didn’t have the threat of an offer sheet to create leverage with Washington, but he did have the ability to leave the NHL entirely to go to the KHL.
Losing Kuznetsov without getting anything in return would’ve been a disaster, so the Capitals caved in with a monster eight-year, $62.4 million contract. Offer sheets wouldn’t create the same leverage because teams receive compensation for losing players, but it would have an impact. Teams would likely be forced into difficult decisions more often.
One idea is simply that NHL GMs have made a “gentleman’s agreement” of sorts not to use offer sheets, keeping the RFA process nice and simple. If you offer sheet one team’s RFA now, who’s to say another team won’t try to poach one of your players down the road? It seems like the 31 teams have just decided it’s easier not to play that game. We’ve also seen examples of teams trading RFAs, like the Blackhawks did with Brandon Saad and Andrew Shaw, rather than risk offer sheets.
But as we sit here in late July awaiting deals for the top remaining restricted free agents, it’s hard not to wonder what some of these teams have to lose. The Hurricanes have nearly $19 million in salary cap space, per Cap Friendly, and seem on the brink of big things after a great offseason thus far. They could use a No. 1 center at the top of the roster. Why not try to sign Johansen or Draisaitl to a huge offer sheet and force another team into a tough decision?
Carolina does have Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm hitting restricted free agent in 2018, so maybe the Hurricanes are worried someone will try to nab Hanifin in a year if they try to sign someone now. They also aren’t exactly swimming in cash, so maybe operating that far under the salary cap is necessary for them.
Still, we hear about how the offer sheets might be coming every summer, yet they never do. Guys like Johansen, Pastrnak, and Draisaitl wait out their offseasons hoping to get good deals, while others like Viktor Arvidsson and Tyler Johnson sign for terms that seem below market value.
Offer sheets could potentially change that dynamic, and make for a more entertaining NHL offseason each year. Teams just have to start actually using all the tools at their disposal.
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