7 Players Named As Offer Sheet Candidates This Summer

Vegas Golden Knights forward Pavel Dorofeyev

Everyone thought that last offseason would be the Summer of the Offer Sheet. But that fell flat. Not one. Nada. Could this be the year, then, that teams begin to go wild on offer sheets? Perhaps the extremely thin unrestricted free agent market could steer clubs to the RFA set as a means of adding impact to their NHL rosters.

To that end, Rory Boylen of Sportsnet offered up seven players who could be candidates to be offer sheeted.

But it should be noted that the stakes (i.e. compensation) won't make it easy for teams to pull the trigger, at least on the high end. For an offer sheet with an AAV of $4.775M to $7.163M, teams will have to surrender a first- and a third-round pick. From $7.163M to $9.95M, it's a first, second & third. And above that? Up to $11.9M, it's TWO firsts, a second and a third. Higher than that and it's four first-rounders.

With that, here is Boylen's list:

Zach Benson, Buffalo Sabres
Mavrik Bourque, Dallas Stars
Pavel Dorofeyev, Vegas Golden Knights
Mackie Samoskevich, Florida Panthers
Jet Greaves, Columbus Blue Jackets
Jack Drury, Colorado Avalanche
Olen Zellweger, Anaheim Ducks
Zach Bolduc, Montréal Canadiens

Let's start at the top, and pretty much eliminate Benson from this list. There's no chance the Sabres let him go, and he's at the top of their priority list to get a deal done this offseason.

Bourque, on the other end, could be the most likely to go. The Stars need to prioritize cap room to get their No. 1 piece of business done this offseason: The re-signing of Jason Robertson, also an RFA. And just to be clear, Robertson is not on this list, because the salary it would take to woo him away from Dallas would be in that range where the signing team would have to surrender FOUR first-round picks. That's complete insanity.

Dorofeyev, after his second consecutive 35+ goal season, is another strong candidate to be poached, as he is in for a massive raise from the $1.8M he made this season. AFP Analytics has him projected at an $8.99M AAV on a six-year deal. The Golden Knights are tight to the cap, though, as Boylen notes, though after Pietrangelo's $8.8 million goes back on LTIR before next season, they would have $13.425 million to work with. And with that $8.99M projected price tag for Dorofeyev, it would cost a signing team a first, second and third round pick in next year's Draft.

For Samoskevich, the Panthers like him, but Boylen suggests that they might rather have the additional second-round pick that they'd get as compensation for an offer sheet in the $2.5M-$3M AAV range. "From Florida's perspective, that pick might come in handy at next year's trade deadline."

With Nathan MacKinnon, Brock Nelson, Nazem Kadri and Nicolas Roy, the Avs have the depth at center that makes Drury expendable, so he's another candidate to accept an offer sheet, particularly with the team's tight cap situation.

Bolduc, who many say has the potential to be a top-six forward, there might some team out there that will value him higher than Montreal would be willing to match.