The offer sheet war between the Habs and Canes is one of my favorite offseason traditions!

Canes match. You're going to need to break the 1st and 3rd barriers for them to not think about it. Plus, you KNOW this is just inviting a Slafkovsky offer sheet down the line

Not if the Habs extend him and Caufield before they're able to be Osheeted.

Can Carolina match? They'll need to move someone to match. They currently have 1 million in cap space. (As I'm typing this I wonder...is Gardiner on LTIR right now or not?)

Gardiner is not LTIR eligible, but CapFriendly also lists Coghlan, Pederson, and Gardiner on the main roster. Cap space is quite easy to make to match this. In reality, there's about 2 million now, all it would take is using the 2nd window from Lajoie's arbitration to buyout the Martinook deal (Gardiner isn't eligible due to ending the season on LTIR). It's not hard or costly for the Canes to match. It's going to take a 1st and a 3rd, and if Montreal want to go that far, Carolina will just take the Bedard ticket

the habs are also over the cap with if they sign him, so they would have the same problem.

Not in this scenario they're not

Will need to be a much higher aav for the Canes to consider not matching

i just mean if montreal can easily clear cap space for necas, so can the canes

Are you sure this is a good idea for the Habs? I mean, they already made that mistake once, and you really sure you want to make the same mistake twice over? I love Necas, but I don’t mind upgrading him to either Slafkovsky or Caufield.

Go above 6.1m and it might work