Easily yes

Yes. It would have to be more then 10 mil for them not to match.

Easy match

Very easy yes.

Think anyone will try it anyways like the Aho situation?

Montreal should’ve offersheeted Aho at the top of the next bracket. 5 years x 10.4 . 8.4 was just an easy match

MTL is most likely to try it again, but I guess they go after Barzal first.

If you're looking for offer sheet targets, it could be tough for Tampa to match an offer sheet on Cirelly for over $8M. They might be able to if they made a trade to offload a big contract but they are very tight on the cap. Another target could be Barzal, he'd be absolutely perfect on the Wild. You'd definitely have to offer him a lot of money for NYI to not match though and likely give up 4 1st round picks to pull it off.

Yeah I'd love the Wild to go after Barzal, but I bet it'd take the four 1sts to get him and that'd be a bit tough to swallow. And yeah, Cirelli comes to mind, but he's definitely 3rd on my list of targets behind Barzal and PLD. I didn't watch much TBL games this year so I worry his stats are inflated thanks to his teammates. I guess if Kaprizov can transition well, though, he'd be in a similar situation running the top line in MN.

Try using Tampa and sign Cirelli to 5 mill, Sergachev to 5 mill and Cernak to 2.5 mill and then get a free buyout for Gourde with a 81.5 mill cap. They’d still be 6 mill over the cap with a 20 man roster. It might take trading 2 more guys to get it doen

See, the Aho OS was strategic at least (In their minds). They weren't sure Dundon was willing to go that far with salary so they took a calculated risk. I think most people knew it would be matched and at the heart of it, so did MB. By not going over the top, they didn't piss off Waddell but they still tested Dundon to see how he'd react. They risked a small amount of bad blood between the two organizations for a test run OS. In the end it didn't work, Waddell is probably not even that mad and MB now knows that Dundon will probably match high salary offers like this going forward.

Truth is OS's just don't work for high priced players UNLESS we're talking McDavid/Matthews type players and the team OS is going full pin crazy with the price. The negatives that come with winning an OS almost negate winning the player in the first place that's why its so hard to win one.

The only time it works is under a perfect storm of a scenario and those are just so rare. It basically has to be what MB did but it actually works. Meaning the GM and owner were simply not willing to pay the player fair value right from the get go in turn insulting the player, the agent and player then explore other options, the league is aware of it and because everyone knows, no one was willing to give a fair value trade offer because why would you right?

Perfect storm:

A) Stubborn ownership/GM with the the RFA in question.
B) Details of bad relationship well know between the player and GM.
C) Predatory offer. Picking a team with a low salary, small market with less cashfow, team that is cap strapped a little. etc.

Im glad you did this. Ive been thinking about an OS for Dubois myself.
Great discussion!

I think the OS is better used on the low-mid priced players, not the top end pay ones. A $4m will only cost a 2nd. For a team looking for a cheap bridge deal on a player $4m might be too rich for them.