St. Louis Blues' offer sheet puts the Maple Leafs in a very tough spot with Nick Robertson

On Tuesday, we saw the Edmonton Oilers opt to take the draft pick compensation for Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, which netted the Oilers a 2nd round pick and a 3rd round pick in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft from the St. Louis Blues.

The Blues dishing out $2.29M per season over the next two years for Holloway, who has produced a total of 18 points in his NHL career across two seasons. Holloway tallied just 9 points in 38 games for the Oilers last season, so seeing him receive as much as he did from the Blues on his bridge deal is certainly loftier than what the expectations were -- and you can bet your bottom dollar that Nick Robertson's representatives have taken notice.

Robertson has vastly outproduced Holloway in their young NHL careers, having scored 17 goals and 34 points across 87 games at the NHL level.

Robertson infamously requested a trade from the Maple Leafs earlier this summer, and while there's no guarantee that his request is granted, the added layer of the financials after the Holloway deal could lead to another RFA holdout scenario in Toronto.

I think it's fair to suggest that Brad Treliving and the Maple Leafs were fine just simply biding their time later into the summer or early into the fall, hoping that the Robertson camp would blink first and sign a deal somewhere in the neighborhood of a bridge deal at around $1M per season. It's safe to say now, though, that $1M is probably a pipe dream, thanks to the Blues' offer sheet on Holloway.

The Leafs do still have a leg to stand on in negotiations, where they can argue that offer sheet deals are structured the way they are as a means of overpaying players in hopes of maximizing their chances of nabbing the player for minimal draft pick compensation. Management may not consider an offer sheet AAV as a factor when handing internal negotiations, since the situations are so vastly different.

Time will tell how this all unfolds, but there's no question that the Holloway offer sheet has thrown a bit of an interesting curveball here that the Leafs will have to deal with, hopefully before training camp.

Source: HockeyDB
Nick Robertson player profile