“These two were always going as a package. This was going to be double offer sheet. Broberg and Holloway were going together, this was going to happen. There were three teams who were prepared to do offer sheets for these players. St. Louis was the preferred candidate, I believe, for both these players, but as we all know, St. Louis had a hard time getting that second round pick back and they ended up getting it from the Pittsburgh Penguins, then they had the compensation and they could check all the boxes and get both players.

But the interesting thing in all of this — two other teams were interested in trying to get all the necessary ingredients to offer sheet Broberg and Holloway. It sound very much like one of the teams was the Calgary Flames… I still don’t know who the third team was. That may remain a white whale for me, we shall see. It sounds very much like Calgary was one of the other teams in pursuit of the offer sheet for Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway.

When you think the Battle of Alberta, when you think about the nastiness and the vitriol between these two teams, my mind right away goes back to the days of the ‘80s when they would compete and one team would win the Stanley Cup one year, and the other team the next. We think about those games and they’d take about four hours to play. You spend more time picking up gloves than announcing the goals, and these are the days of Dave Semenko and Marty McSorely and Don Jackson and Tim Hunter and Jim Peplinski and everybody else going at it on the ice. Legitimate hatred between Calgary and Edmonton, the fan base didn’t get along, fights in the stands, et cetra. And we fast forward to the summer of 2024, and that feud could’ve been played out with offer sheets. Just consider what that would’ve done to the Battle of Alberta, and if there would’ve been anymore pressure on Edmonton to try and maneouver their player personnell in order to match the offer, knowing that it was the provincial rival.”