Pittsburgh might be able to benefit on both ends from St. Louis AND Edmonton, if it works out the right way
The Penguins helped put the Oilers in a bind by sending St. Louis’ second round pick back to the Blues on Tuesday. The Blues needed that selection back in order to meet the offer sheet compensation for what they signed restricted free agent defenseman Philip Broberg. STL went onto compound Edmonton’s problems by sending a third round level offer sheet their way when forward Dylan Holloway accepted a contract.
Now the ball is in Edmonton’s court. They can take up to a week to figure out what they want to do in response to the offer sheet news. The Oilers can choose to match STL’s offers on Broberg and/or Holloway and keep the player(s) in Edmonton. Or Edmonton could let one or both go and take the draft pick compensation for the respective offer sheet(s) and watch the players go that they don’t match.
The kicker is that Edmonton is completely out of cap space, adding to the degree of difficulty on this matter. But, in the NHL, cap relief is always available — it’s just a matter of how creative and how much a team is willing to pay. One easy partial escape route could come from the magic of LTIR; Edmonton might be able to park Evander Kane to the side for at least the start of the season and gain some relief, though it might be temporary and wouldn’t be enough to retain both young players just signed by St. Louis.
Broberg is the key to the whole STL attempt, he’s only played in 81 total NHL games and despite being drafted high has failed to find his spot in the lineup…Until the last 10 games of the playoffs anyways, when he stepped into the biggest time of year and acquitted himself really well. (In fact, he did too well, but that’s a different topic for a different time).
NHL teams are understandably very reluctant to hand over a promising defender who is seemingly right on the verge of taking the next step to become a big time contributor, doubly so when the control is taken out of their hands like STL did. With that in mind, Sportsnet talked outloud about how the the Oilers might be able to find a way to fit Broberg back into the fold.
Which is where the Penguins could circle back into the picture.
But the money is steep, and the Oilers are $7,225,000 over the cap at this moment, with the two offer sheets and Kane ($5.125 million) on the books.
Bowman would likely have to attach a draft pick to Cody Ceci (who’s in the last year of his deal at $3.25 million) and trade him out, if he wants to keep Broberg.
Pittsburgh has proven their open for business in taking on veterans if a draft pick is attached, it’s how Kevin Hayes will be on the team. They can also make the math work, per Puck Pedia adding Ceci and his $3.25 million to the Pens and dropping Ryan Shea would mean carrying seven defensemen (including presumably Jack St. Ivany in the healthy scratch role until there’s an injury) and see the Pens scrape in just under the salary cap with $274k to spare.
What is alluring and worth mentioning is that Ceci is a player with a tremendous amount of connective tissue to the Penguins. As we all remember, Ceci played for Pittsburgh in 2021 under Mike Sullivan, and had a strong season to help get his career back on track. Go beyond that and Ceci is a former teammate of Pittsburgh AGM Jason Spezza from both of their days in Ottawa and Toronto — which also means that Ceci played under GM Kyle Dubas in Toronto. Even for as inter-connected as hockey can be, that’s a lot of common ties established that stand out as to why the Pens might be interested in getting Ceci for reasons beyond simply helping Edmonton out. It would provide the Penguins with another veteran player who might be passable enough to help them try and make the playoffs themselves this year, as the old company line is going.
Edmonton would win in the big picture, since they get to call which defenseman they get to keep — and maybe even more importantly than that can take pride in not having to take their medicine by watching a 23-year old leave them right when it looks like he’s finally budding into an impact player. It sucks for the Oil to have to pay a price to drop Ceci, but such is life when a contender paints themselves into a salary cap corner.
At this point their options looking like they will either lose Broberg and try to use that draft pick to help them out later, or a second choice to strike and deny St. Louis the opportunity to nab a rising player. The next week will show the answer but the latter option sounds a lot more palatable and like how an NHL Stanley Cup Final team operates.
Pittsburgh would win (twice) by first marginally upgrading picks earlier today with St. Louis and then with the benefit of adding a second or third round pick from the Oilers to solve the problem that in essence the Pens helped to create for Edmonton. Such is life attempting to be an opportunistic builder.
The Oilers will likely have no shortage of options for teams to off-load Ceci or another veteran on in the coming days, and they do have the benefit of time in the next week to figure out how to pave a path forward. It would be fitting enough if the team that helped the Oilers into this mess about potentially losing Broberg also provided (at a cost!) Edmonton the opportunity to keep the defender by paying to drop Ceci.