We’ve scoured the NHL for Winnipeg Jets upgrades through unrestricted free agency, the trade market, and the Jets’ options at No. 8 in the draft. It was difficult.
But do not give up hope. There is another way. A dark way. A perfectly legal, though seldom used, often unsuccessful but sometimes brilliant way of signing top, young players.
We’re talking about offer sheets.
There is an exciting crop of restricted free agents this summer, including but not limited to Jason Robertson, Leo Carlsson, and Connor Bedard. These players’ rights are owned by their current teams, but they’re eligible to sign contracts with anyone else in the NHL, including Winnipeg.
Look at the 2024 St. Louis Blues, who signed Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg — two Edmonton Oilers RFAs — away from the cap-crunched Oilers. Holloway and Broberg have become key players for St. Louis, with Holloway scoring 51 points in 59 games and Broberg leading Blues defencemen in icetime and points, but the Blues paid Edmonton just a second and a third-round pick to get them. It’s the same mechanism by which Carolina signed Jesperi Kotkaniemi from Montreal in 2021 and Edmonton took Dustin Penner from Anaheim in 2007, but that’s the entire list of successful offer sheets in the cap era.
Why discuss such rare transactions? Why mention Bedard, Carlsson, Gauthier, Pavel Dorofeyev, Adam Fantilli, Brandt Clarke, Trevor Zegras, Simon Edvinsson, Simon Nemec, Jamie Drysdale, or Jet Greaves at all when even the great summer of offer sheets didn’t come to pass in 2025, with a lower salary cap?
- It would add talent to the Jets, without sending Winnipeg’s own talent back via trade.
- That talent would be much further along in its development — with known, higher ceilings — than any draft picks sent back as compensation.
- It’s fun.
How offer sheets work
Here’s the PuckPedia explanation: An offer sheet is a contract offered to a restricted free agent (RFA) by a team other than the player’s current team. If the player signs the offer sheet, their original team has the right to match the terms or receive compensation in the form of draft picks if they choose not to match.
The amount of compensation depends on the size of the contract:
Offer sheet AAVDraft compensation
Above $11,700,193
Four first-round picks
$9,360,154 – $11,700,192
Two first-round picks, one second-round pick, one third-round pick
$7,020,114 – $9,360,153
One first-round pick, second-round pick, one third-round pick
$4,680,077 – $7,020,113
One first-round pick, one third-round pick
$2,340,038 – $4,680,076
One second-round pick
$1,544,425 – $2,340,037
One third-round pick
Below $1,544,424
None
Some tiers are shown in red because a team must have its own draft picks available as compensation. Winnipeg does not have its 2027 second-round pick, via its Brandon Tanev acquisition, and would need to re-acquire it from Seattle to make those tiers work. Finally, a technicality: The AAV, for offer sheet compensation purposes, is the total cost of the contract divided by its length to a maximum of five years.
How do we make this work for Winnipeg?
How to make offer sheets successful
One of the reasons successful offer sheets are so rare is that they need several factors to align.
First and foremost, they take a restricted free agent who’s open to the idea of signing with another NHL team. Holloway and Broberg had to want to sign contracts with St. Louis for the whole thing to work — something made clear in the inside story of St. Louis’ successful offer sheets. There also needs to be incentive for teams to let players go. The reason St. Louis’ offer sheets were successful was that the Oilers had worked themselves into an untenable cap position. They couldn’t afford to match the contracts Holloway or Broberg had signed without roster surgery. Their GM, Stan Bowman, didn’t see a way to perform that surgery.
Easy, right? Winnipeg needs to find a good, young player who has reasons to want a fresh start. It needs to offer that player money and opportunity, in some combination, such that they’re willing to leave their current team and choose Winnipeg’s offer sheet over any others that come their way. And Winnipeg needs their target’s team to be in a cap crunch, lest that team match whatever contract the Jets offered.
Top RFA players, regardless of their team’s cap space
Here are 35 of the top offer-sheet eligible players for 2026:
Some of these players are well beyond reasonable discussion. Even if the Jets tried to give Connor Bedard or Leo Carlsson the richest contract in NHL history, Chicago or Anaheim wouldn’t let them go. The maximum contract, $20.8 million, would be easy for the Ducks and Blackhawks to match. (It would also use up all the rest of Winnipeg’s cap space, though the Jets could presumably make follow-up moves if the world goes crazy and Carlsson jumps on board.)
Winnipeg’s best play would be to target players whose teams are closer to the cap.
Teams that could be facing a cap crunch
The NHL’s $104 million cap ceiling drastically reduces the number of teams facing cap crises heading into next season, but some challenges do exist.
Colorado is projected to have $3.0 million in cap space, prior to the $2.2 million in overages it will pay via Brent Burns’ performance bonuses. The Avalanche must use that limited space to sign RFA Jack Drury, one other forward, and three defencemen. Vegas is projected to have $4.6 million in cap space and has several roster spots to fill, including a presumed UFA contract for Rasmus Andersson. Pavel Dorofeyev is the Golden Knights’ most prominent RFA and has scored at least 35 goals in two straight seasons. Winnipeg would do well to force the issue.
Montreal is projected to have $9.2 million in cap space and needs to sign Arber Xhekaj, Zack Bolduc, and Kirby Dach. The Canadiens have some flexibility, with several waivers-exempt contracts, but Xhekaj, Bolduc, and Dach should earn enough money between the three of them to put the Canadiens in a bind. If the Jets had their own second-round pick, dual offer sheets could force Montreal to make difficult decisions.
Dallas is projected to have $11.0 million in cap space, but needs to sign Jason Robertson, Mavrik Bourque, and Arttu Hyry to fill out their roster. Robertson’s contract alone will be a challenge. If the Jets had their own second-round pick such that they could offer Robertson and Bourque, it could create quite the problem.
Remember the genius of the Blues’ move on Holloway and Broberg was partly that they signed two offer sheets at the same time, but in different compensation tiers, giving up a second-round pick for Broberg and a third-round pick for Holloway. That kind of move is unavailable to Winnipeg, unless it gets its own second-round pick from Seattle. Teams can’t tie up the same draft pick in two different offer sheets either. For example, Winnipeg would not be allowed to sign Bolduc and Dach to matching $7.0 million contracts, thereby owing a first- and a third-round pick for each.
The Jets’ most viable play in this unlikely thought exercise? Finding a way to “overpay” one player. This brings us back to Robertson, Dorofeyev, and Drury.
What could actually work?
Robertson scores points at a nearly identical rate to Kyle Connor and is eligible for UFA status as early as next summer. In a normal, non-offer sheet market, Robertson could easily earn above Connor’s $12 million on a long-term extension.
If the Jets signed Robertson to a $12 million offer sheet, however, all it would accomplish is that Dallas would have cost certainty on a suddenly more tradeable asset. They’d have the choice of taking four first-round picks from Winnipeg by way of compensation or shopping Robertson, suddenly extended long term at fair value, for a Mikko Rantanen-type blockbuster. (A successful offer sheet might require Winnipeg to spend so much that it depreciates Robertson’s value as a trade chip. Make it $16 million and you’ve probably poached a star, but you’ve also traded four first-round picks for a star earning a $16 million cap hit.)
Dorofeyev, 25, is still two seasons away from UFA eligibility. Whereas a short-term contract might typically cost close to $7 million, a long-term deal that bought UFA years could reach closer to $9 million. The Jets’ second-round pick issue pops up here, too: Winnipeg can only pay as much as $7,020,113 before reaching a compensation tier that requires that pick. Still, the Golden Knights appear to be in a bind. A two-year, $10 million AAV contract that walked Dorofeyev to free agency might be enough money to make it worth it for the player and untenable for the team. That would cost Winnipeg the money, the cap hit, two first-round picks, a second-round pick, and a third-round pick.
Drury, 26, has appeal as a middle-six centre with room to grow. He scored 27 points in 82 games in Colorado without power play time, while playing great defence. His 1.41 points per minute at five-on-five would have fit right in with Cole Perfetti (1.46) on the Jets’ second line, but Drury is stuck behind Nathan MacKinnon, Brock Nelson, and Nazem Kadri. Winnipeg could offer Drury its second-line centre job, with Perfetti on his left and Gabriel Vilardi on his right, on a well-above-market price of $6.0 million AAV. Colorado would be in tough to match it and it would cost Winnipeg a first-round pick and a third-round pick if it worked.
Giving up a first-round pick might be a scary thought for a team that finished 2025-26 with the seventh-worst record in the NHL. Drury would also have to want to leave a city that loves him — and where his uncle, Chris Drury, was a playoffs legend. There’s also the matter of: Why not just trade for him? The acquisition cost could be similar, but Winnipeg could sign him to a contract closer to market value.
The league’s relative abundance of cap space, with a $104 million cap, makes the NHL’s seldom-used offer sheet a challenge for any team. Winnipeg would also need to make sure it took care of its own RFAs now and in the future lest it become a target for retaliation. But the Jets do want to win while Connor Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele, and Josh Morrissey still lead the way. It’s worth considering every available option.
