From Teemu Selanne to Keith Tkachuk, the Winnipeg Jets have been on the receiving end of offer sheets... it's just been a while.
The St. Louis Blues and Edmonton Oilers have been the talk of the hockey world the past month.
And no, those conversations haven't been about the weddings of forwards Oskar Sundqvist and Connor McDavid - although the McDavids certainly threw quite the banger.
Last Tuesday, the Blues swept in and signed Oilers RFAs Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg to two-year deals.
Seven days later, the Oilers responded, indicating they would not be matching the offers. They made moves throughout the week to better prepare themselves for the season ahead, but management felt it was in the club's best interests to move on from the two players while taking back the draft picks gained as compensation and additionally by way of a showing of good faith in an announced trade following the official signings.
"This is a tool that I think everyone uses and should use," Blues GM Doug Armstrong said on Tuesday. "I think it was reported that I wouldn't have done this to (previous Oilers' GM) Kenny Holland. That's the furthest thing from the truth. Quite honestly, I'd do it to my mother if she was managing the Oilers. My job is to take care of the St. Louis Blues fans and the St. Louis Blues organization. We saw an opportunity to do that."
How this move affects the Jets:
No, the signings do not directly affect Winnipeg. Sure, the Jets will play against Holloway and Broberg more often as they are now members of a Central Division team, but that really isn't an issue worth discussing.
The biggest concern is that of unsigned restricted free agent forward Cole Perfetti.
Sure, any team could have swept in and offered a contract to the now 22-year-old youngster. But the reality is, offer sheets really don't happen all that often anymore.
But when they do, they are extremely well-calculated.
Prior to the Blues' two contract offerings, the most recent offer sheet was back in 2021 (Jesperi Kotkaniemi - From Montreal to Carolina), and before that, 2019 in the first part of the game of cat and mouse between the Hurricanes and Canadiens (Sebastian Aho). The Aho offer sheet was a full six years after the previous most recent offer sheet (Ryan O'Reilly, 2013).
The longer the Jets wait to sign Perfetti, the more opportunity they expose their young forward to of being offered a contract by a rival club.
Winnipeg has been involved in the offer sheet business before, and on two occasions. But both instances were roughly 30 years ago, and the times have changed considerably since then. In 1992, the Calgary Flames presented forward Teemu Selanne with a three-year contract worth $2.7 million - roughly $1.5 million higher than Winnipeg's original offer. The contract came from Calgary as a Group IV offer sheet for an unsigned European prospect, as Selanne was technically considered an RFA at the time.
Winnipeg staunchly matched the contract, and Selanne would go on to have the greatest rookie season in NHL history just months later.
Then, three years later, the Chicago Blackhawks attempted to lure fellow star forward Keith Tkachuk out of Winnipeg. The Hawks signed Tkachuk to a five-year, $17.2 million contract. With Tkachuk having made a public trade requested just months prior, all talk of him re-signing with Winnipeg was over. But with the Blackhawks swooping in, it allowed Winnipeg to match the deal and essentially 'force' Tkachuk to play for the Jets.
The Jets matched the offer sheet in just six hours, blowing out the faint flicker of hope shared by both Tkachuk and the Blackhawks that he would have a change of scenery for the 1995-96 season.
Much like that of Selanne, Tkachuk put up the best season of his career in the months following, as he scored 50 goals and 98 points, all while being stripped of the captaincy in advance of the season - Winnipeg's last in the NHL until 2011.