NHL Player Agent Blames Lack of Offer Sheets on Team Owners

Mason McTavish is one of the RFAs who has not received an offer sheet

This was supposed to be The Summer of the Offer Sheet. After last year's massive moves by the St. Louis Blues to swoop in and sign Edmonton Oilers' RFAs Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway worked out so well, it was expected that we'd see more of that this time around.

With potential targets like JJ Peterka, Matthew Knies, Marco Rossi and Mason McTavish coming into July, everyone was holding their breath for a big splash.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Offer Sheet glory this summer... Nothing. Crickets. So far, at least.

Why?

According to an anonymous NHL player agent, speaking with James Murphy of rg.org, team owners are to blame.

Here’s my theory, if you will: I think in order to make an offer sheet, you have to overpay the player by definition because otherwise, why would you even get the player?...
What ends up happening is I think the management team has to explain themselves to ownership before they issue the offer sheet. I think the owners are competitive against each other for sure, but they’re more interested in keeping guidelines on salaries than they are on one-upping each other. So the owner then says to the general manager:
‘Look, if they match it, then all we did is drive up the market, and I don’t want to be that guy that’s accused of doing that because then my buddy who owns that other team will call me and give me (expletive) about it and say the same to other owners.’

So he's not making an official charge of 'collusion', but in a peripheral, indirect way, we wonder if some might construe that as 'collusion-y'.

Now, the agent does acknowledge the other big factor that's playing into all this— the fact that with the salary cap going up so much this season, the targeted teams do have more cap space to match (see: the Anaheim Ducks & McTavish, for instance), so rival teams figure there's just no chance the original club won't or can't match.

NHL Team owners at fault for lack of offer sheets, says agent

"But, like I said," adds the agent, "even if they don’t match, I think the owners still get pissed at each other, and no one wants that. I’m not obviously privy to it, so this is just my guess from my position, but I think there’s still that ‘Old Boys' network going on."

In the earlier-cited cases, Peterka was traded by the Buffalo Sabres even before free agency kicked in, to the Utah Mammoth, fending off any potential offer sheets. And the Toronto Maple Leafs got Knies signed to a long-term extension, also before July 1.

As for Rossi, his situation remains in an ugly stalemate in Minnesota, so that window is still open, but an offer sheet is not very likely at all, according to one insider.

The Ducks have over $21 million still in cap space, so they are able to match anything that comes McTavish's way, and everyone knows it.