Should the Ottawa Senators Attempt to Offer Sheet RFAs?

So many RFAs are having spectacular contract seasons, so should the Ottawa Senators risk draft picks and cap space to acquire their services?

The offer sheet is a lot like the Loch Ness Monster. So many people have claimed to have seen it, yet there is no definitive proof that it actually exists.

The last accepted offer sheet was by Ryan O’ Reilly in 2013, who accepted a 2-year, $10 million contract from the Calgary Flames, only to have it matched by the Colorado Avalanche, O’ Reilly’s team at the time. And the last time a team lost a player to an offer sheet was in 2007, when the Anaheim Ducks didn’t match a 5-year, $21.5 million deal that the Edmonton Oilers offered Dustin Penner.

Despite its infrequent appearances, the offer sheet always worms its way into the mind of fans who don’t want to lose a promising player. Which brings us to the Ottawa Senators.

Should the Sens Give it a Go?

The Senators are in an interesting situation this summer. They have no first round pick, and if they were to not re-sign any of their pending free agents (Which isn’t out of the question when it comes to Eugene Melnyk) the team would have over $35 million in available cap space.

This cap space will be available in a summer full of spectacular players who are pending RFAs. Guys like Mitch Marner, Kyle Connor, Brayden Point and Kasperi Kapanen all play for teams that are going to be in a tight cap crunch, and those teams may not have the funds to match a contract offered by the Sens.

These facts may have some Senators supporters hoping the team will use some of that cap space and draft picks to get one of those superstars, but don’t be fooled! Signing a star RFA would be detrimental to how the Sens should go about their rebuild.

Don’t Do It!

With all due respect to the talent on the RFA market, but the potential cost (In money and draft picks) is too steep for the Senators to pay.

Let’s look at the offer sheet compensation chart. Say the Sens want to sign Brayden Point of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a center with 171 points in 200 NHL games and he’s only 22. With the season Point is having (65 points in 50 games), he could easily get $7-$8 million on the open market.

Now the Sens could afford a contract of that size in money and draft picks. An offer sheet from $6,088,981-$8,118,641 would require the Senators to part with a first, second, and third round pick, and If it was over that $8.118 million mark they give up two firsts, a second and a third.

The Senators have those picks to give up if they wanted to sign Point, but doing so for one star player when the star players the team currently has (Matt Duchene and Mark Stone) could be on their way out wouldn’t make sense.

Those are draft picks the Senators desperately need and the cap space may be used to take on accept trades that include dead money contracts as well as draft picks or sign the players they could potentially lose on July 1st.

The idea of the Ottawa Senators getting a high-profile RFA is a tantalizing one, but it would come at the cost of draft picks and cap space that the organization needs to use for the future of the team. The Sens should keep their hands out of the RFA cookie jar and focus on re-signing the players who need contracts now.