Restricted free agent offer sheets may no longer just be something that hockey fans and media dream about at the start of every summer. They might actually be a path that NHL general managers start exploring.
They should be exploring it, anyway.
After the St. Louis Blues successfully signed forward Dylan Holloway and defenseman Philip Broberg away from the Edmonton Oilers two summers ago, we saw two more offer sheets get signed this offseason.
The New Jersey Devils attempted to sign Barrett Hayton away from the Utah Mammoth, while the Philadelphia Flyers signed Anaheim Ducks forward Leo Carlsson to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet that makes him, for now, the highest paid player in the NHL on a per-year basis.
In the end, both offer sheets were matched and everybody stayed with their current teams.
That is part of the problem with offer sheets, even if you do find a player that wants to sign with you, and even if you agree to a deal and are comfortable giving up the draft pick assets, it still needs to be a situation where the other team can not, or will not, match it. That is easier said than done. It is also going to be significantly more difficult as the salary cap continues to rise and before teams get themselves into more salary cap headaches.
Even so, given how little top-tier talent reaches the unrestricted free agent market, and how hard it can be to find top-tier talent, the restricted free agent market seems to be sitting there and waiting to be potentially explored.
So let’s look ahead to the summer of 2027 and identify some potential restricted free agents who could get an offer sheet.
This is not simply a list of the best restricted free agents going into next season. San Jose Sharks forward Macklin Celebrini would almost certainly top that list. But there is no way they are going to let him even get close to the RFA market given what they saw unfold with Carlsson within their own division.
We are looking at realistic options, and realistic players who could actually get an offer sheet.