Last Monday I woke up like I always have the last few years. Starting my day during the wee hours of the morning by taking my dog out, right before I perform 30-40 minutes of self hatred in the mirror to get me ready for my morning workout. Another parallel between that morning and every other morning the last few years was a complete and total indifference about our Blues.
Are we going to tank this year?
Is Robert Thomas a top 10 center in the league and our best forward since before prime Vladi? (Yes)
Are we going to barely miss playoffs by a few games for the third straight season, putting us in no mans land drafting somewhere between 13th-18th overall?
None of these outcomes are good, at least good enough to shorten my self hatred time in the mirror every morning.
But on that fateful day Doug Armstrong said you know what? My nuts are feeling abnormally swollen today, and that Stan Bowman muppet fuck never really got the punishment he deserved before becoming an NHL GM again. Let’s stir shit up.
For those who don’t know what an offer sheet is, it is the closest thing you can get to a “mister steal your girl” in professional sports you can get. You make an offer to another team’s player(s) that they’re in a committed relationship with (on the verge of breaking up, aka restricted free agents), and the other team has 7 days to either match or beat the offer. Otherwise those restricted free agents are about to post a bunch of hot pics post breakup for all their besties to hype up.
To describe it in a gif, here is a live look at Doug Armstrong right now.
Since the year 2000 there have been only 10 offer sheets tendered in the NHL, and only 2 of them have been accepted. The last time two players got claimed in an offer sheet you’d have to look all the way back to 1991 when the Bruins claimed Glen Featherstone and Dave Thomlinson from: the St. Louis Blues.
TLDR; this shit doesn’t happen often.
And when it does, well you typically expect it from big name teams out of Canada, the Original 6, or potential Cup contenders for that season. Not your little midwest, lookin like another year of middle-of-the-pack team. I am too lazy to find the tweets from the media nerds, but the collective opinion was this was not on anyone’s bingo card.
So who did we get?
Broberg is an up and coming young LHD who showed a ton of promise in last year’s playoffs for Edmonton, who some people think could work his way into the Blues’ top pairing with Parayko this season (not that he is the next Josi, but because the rest of our LHD are wheelchairs with pedals the last couple of years.
Holloway on the other hand is another promising young forward, who had some impressive goals in the playoffs for EDM such as this one taking it coast to coast against Vancouver.
*5 minutes of self hate in the morning just got taken off my routine*
Now the downside to this is we did overpay for these two guys in terms of what they’re currently worth if they were full UFAs this summer. However the reality is all Armstrong did was use some of our huge amount of leftover cap $ (even with us getting Holloway and Broberg we have over $10mil in cap space going into next summer), and got us two more 1st round picks under the age of 25 (Broberg 8th overall in 2019 and Holloway 14th overall in 2020).
Now, we have 12 1st round picks under the age of 25.
All of that young talent, and $10mil in cap space next summer for Armstrong/Steen to go get us a top forward or defenseman.
10 minutes taken off my self hate time in the morning, now let me go be delusional that we’re playoff bound from now until next March-April damnit.
The Morning Skate 