St. Louis Blues general manager publicly called out Stan Bowman for costly transaction

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Joshua Deeds
August 21, 2024 (6:19 PM)

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The Chicago Blackhawks former GM Stan Bowman has had a rough start in Edmonton, as Doug Armstrong and the St. Louis Blues have poached two players.

Armstrong offer-sheeted winger Dylan Holloway and defenseman Philip Broberg, to help push the Blues rebuild along.

While there are no rules against offer-sheeting another team's RFA's, it typically ends up in retaliation later down the road. For example, the Canadiens offer-sheeted the Carolina Hurricanes Sebastian Aho, of course, which the Canes had to match, to keep their top-line center.

Later in 2019, the Canes would offer sheet Jesperi Kotkaniemi, and the Canadiens would later lose KK to the Canes on a one-year deal, for $6.1 Million AAV, and has been in Carolina since.

The moves would draw ire from NHL fans, and of course, Armstrong was thinking of his team first, an honorable move but in the long run, too many GMs could view the transaction negatively.

But he won't apologize for it either:

"I don't believe in offer sheets to harm an organization. Meaning, put an offer sheet on because you know they're going to match but it puts them in a bad spot. That for me at least, I wouldn't do that. I don't see the purpose in that. I think the purpose of an offer sheet is, if you look at a franchise and you think you have opportunity to get a player, you do it and that's the way we looked at this one."

Armstrong: 'I'd do it to my mother if she was managing the Oilers'

Clearly, a man who stands by his principles, and Bowman's inability to react in time echoes a sign of financial weakness, that Ken Holland left the Oilers in.

"I think it was reported that I wouldn't have done this to Kenny Holland," Armstrong said. "That's the furthest thing from the truth. Quite honestly, I'd do it to my mother if she was managing the Oilers.

"My job is to take care of the St. Louis Blues fans and the St. Louis Blues organization. We saw an opportunity to do that."

The Oilers were never going to match Holloway or Broberg's cap hits, as they only had $945K of cap space available.

Source: TSN
Armstrong: 'If there is a GM code not to do offer sheets, no one emailed it to me'