Quoting: Hurricanes_WPG
The world where the Rangers don't have the cap to match this is one where they overextend to keep their deadline additions or where the raises to Laf and Chytil eat up too much of their cap. This is wishful thinking on my part, for sure, and realistically the Rangers will probably do whatever it takes to keep Miller, but especially if Lafreniere gets 3+MM (which would be second-round compensation should another, perhaps Francophone team offer it to him), this puts the Rangers in a bad spot whether they match or not.
I really think that teams should start using offer-sheets as weapons against teams that are up against the cap.
Oh don't get me wrong, I completely agree that teams should be using OS's, it's just not something that we're going to see a lot of any time soon. The only way I could see them becoming a semi-regular thing is if the league went to an NBA-style, multi tiered salary cap. When you look at the only two successful OS's since 1997, they were Penner and Kotkaniemi, both of whom were significantly overpaid, and both of who were (are) bottom 6 forwards.
It's funny though, and semi-off topic, but I've gone down the OS rabbit hole. I remember the Weber/ROR/Aho/Shanahan/Stevens ones, but I forgot all about the crazy Sergei Federov one, and that it was Carolina who made the offer. It was obviously pre-cap, but it's wacky $h1t like this that led to the cap-Carolina offered him a front loaded contract, with a $12 million bonus for reaching the conference finals, which Detroit matched, and ended up costing them $28 million(!!!) in '97-'98 (He only played 21 regular season games that year, because he held out until Feb, when he signed the OS). The Wings ended up winning the Cup, so I'm sure it was fine, but what a wild one.
As a Ducks fan, the craziest thing about the Penner offersheet was that it saved Burke from himself, but he still managed to turn around and f**k it up. With the 1st+2nd+3rd in the position they were, the picks were Tyler Myers, Justin Schultz, and Travis Hamonic. Instead, he ended up with Jake Gardiner (traded for the corpse of Franky Beauchemin), Schultz (did not sign, ended up signing in Edmonton), and Marc Andre Bergeron (Who played a whopping 116 minutes with the Ducks).
So yeah, again I totally agree that there should be more OS's, and that it would absolutely bring a heck of a lot more excitement to the offseason, but a Miller offersheet is higher than this.