St. Louis Blues have guts other teams lack with offer sheets

The St. Louis Blues made a bold move when they gave offer sheets to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway of the Edmonton Oilers. On the surface, it may seem like just a regular signing, but the Blues showed some guts.

I've never really understood why, other than rules used to be slightly harsher penalizing teams, but the reality is that very few teams put in offer sheets on restricted free agents. I believe the worry was often that there might be revenge signings and then a war of teams just trying to pilfer away prospects.

Nevertheless, the Blues have rolled the dice and played the odds. As of writing this, we don't yet know what the outcome will be - whether these two defenders will wear the Note or if Edmonton will somehow match.

What we do know is that Doug Armstrong is showing his intelligence. Not only has he signed two guys that could easily take up top-six minutes, but he's backed a championship contender into a corner.

The Oilers put themselves in a position where they had guys to sign and only a certain number of dollars to do it. So, Armstrong has made this move knowing that he either gets two, quality players or he puts the Oilers in a cap-hell situation.

You don't really need to worry about retaliation

The Oilers will be too busy trying to hang onto their big names to worry about any pending Blues RFAs in the near future.

This is a situation I'm surprised more teams have not taken advantage of. On the one hand, I appreciate the unwritten rule where you play the gentleman's game of trying to let teams keep most of their RFAs. However, if you have guys you believe can improve your team and you know, with certainty, the team you're signing them from probably can't afford them, why not take the risk?

Signing these guys probably costs you draft picks, but the Blues have acquired enough of those that dropping two won't be a big deal. Ultimately, this is a very smart move with almost no downside.

It creates a log jam on the blue line, but if we're honest, that's not a bad thing. Making it a competition in training camp can be nothing but good for a team that has not been helping their goaltenders enough the last two seasons.

Let's see how it all pans out, but it's a shrewd move by Army and we should all approve.