#rfas

Offer sheets generally don’t happen because they are usually the most expensive way to get an RFA. What happens is basically when an RFA’s contract comes up, the team that has their rights can give them a qualifying offer. This is basically the team saying “hey we want you back, here’s what we’re willing to give you,” some of the younger lower on the depth chart players a lot of the time will just take this deal, because they’re not going to get better probably. Some of the star young guys, will usually counter offer, or otherwise negotiate because they have that bargaining power to do so. Now of course teams don’t have to extend qualifying offers to all their RFAs and when this happens, the player becomes essentially a UFA. 

Offer sheets are the other option. Basically an offer sheet is used by another team, who wants to sign a teams RFA. The offer sheet has to be more than the original qualifying offer and you still don’t get first dibs on this player. When a player gets offer sheeted the team with the players rights, gets to submit another offer, but again this has to be more than the offer sheet. So if a team really wants another teams RFA they have to offer that RFA more money than their current team thinks they’re worth. THis is risky because if another team that has invested in this players development and they don’t want him for as much as you do, that should be considered a red flag. But it’s not necessarily a science, just more of an interpretation of the system that a lot of people buy into for good reasons.

Now it’s my experience that offer sheets are not used as a way to get an RFA most of the time. They’re usually used for one team to force another team to overpay a player. This would mean them submitting an offer sheet for just a little bit more than the original qualifying offer, just to watch that team have to raise the amount and possibly put themselves in cap trouble.

To make it more clear i’ll use David PAstrnak and the Boston Bruins as an example.

David Pastrnak is an RFA that the Bruins have given a qualifying offer too. While PAstrnak and his agent go over the offer, the Montreal Canadiens decide they want Pastrnak. They find out the bruins are offering Pastrnak 12 mil over 3 years. So the Habs decide to offer Pastrnak 24 mil over 3 years. Becuase they need to ensure the bruins won’t match it. because in this scenario they want David Pastrnak. The Bruins decide they will miss Pasta but that 8 mil is too much money, they can’t afford that. so they let Pasta walk.

Now let’s say instead of the montreal canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs want to offer sheet Pastrnak, but they want to do it as a way to screw over the bruins more than needing him on their team. So when they see the bruins offer Pastrnak 12 mil for 3 years they bump it up to 15 mil for 3 years. This means the bruins bump the contract to 18 mil for 3 years. It’s not an otherworldly amount for Pastrnak but it’s more than the bruins initially wanted to spend. So a few years down the line that’s an extra 4 mil they do not have.