Don' think the Oilers would have any choice but to accept. Otherwise likely the Habs offer 6.3m X 5 offer sheet of a first and third, which Oilers couldn't come close to matching and Bouchard likely accepts.

I'd offer Kovacevic, Struble, Evans, Ylonen, Kidney, FLA 1st, COL 2nd, etc & take back cap such as Foegele or be the 3rd party to retain on a Yama deal. Your offer should be close value wise but I would imagine EDM wants to acquire players for now and I'd rather not move Barron or Beck (or our '24 1st for that matter). I know "quality over quantity" but I'd be interested to see if there was a way both clubs could get some issues solved in one move. EDM would alleviate some cap constraint and revamp their bottom 6, cheap "semi-replacement" in Kovacevic and a fairly good LD prospect with a couple picks. MTL gets the RD they desperately need and offer to take the cap/retain as 3rd party essentially for free. Just a couple thoughts on the matter from my POV, don't know if anyone will agree with me but that's alright.

I disagree about the Oilers not matching, every team can exceed the cap by 10% in the offseason. This means that the Oilers have the 5.9 mil cap space + 8.35 mil overage to match. IMO they would instantly match and deal with the cap issue later by trading assets or paying to dump some closer to the end of the offseason.

Swap the pick to this years 5th and I can see that going through. I don't think they let him go for this package, he is a young budding defenseman that will only continue to get better.

This year's 5th is certainly not on the table, but I understand your reasoning sir!

Yeah yeah. They would match and spend some draft capital to make room. I don't think Offer Sheets are gonna go from almost none to several every year.

It's interesting that he's not that far from where Shea Weber was when he got offer sheeted though.

I think they are gonna need quality assets back to even consider.

I highly doubt we get sucked into this offer sheet madness, but I appreciate that you like the offer.