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Offer Sheet Coming for Mathew Barzal?

Elliotte Friedman firmly believes offer sheets will play a factor this summer, specifically in regards to Mathew Barzal negotiations with the Islanders.

Elliotte Friedman was recently a guest on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast and said that he believes an offer sheet will play a role this summer, specifically towards forward Mathew Barzal.

“Well I do believe, the offer sheets will come,”  said Friedman on the uber popular podcast. He added:

“The reason I do is because it is so hard to find good players now, we’re going to another team with 32 and also the owners… there’s more analytics people who are starting to work for teams and they believe in it. There’s a lot of studies on the draft and basically the NHL draft takes a huge drop after pick #2. There are a lot of people that say it is worth doing it.”

Friedman also added that the Sebastian Aho offer that was made by the Montreal Canadiens last summer (but obviously didn’t pan out) was not the only offer contemplated. The Toronto Maple Leafs were completely convinced a team was going to make an offer on Auston Matthews.

“I will tell you this, the Toronto Maple Leafs 100% believed that if Auston Matthews got to July 1st last year, Arizona was gonna offer sheet him 7 years the max,” Friedman said. “I have looked at it and people around the league have told me they believe that to be the case.”

There were other rumors that the Columbus Blue Jackets were reportedly in on Mitch Marner. Friedman explained that had the Blue Jackets offer looked a little different, things might have played out another way. He explained:

“Columbus wanted to offer sheet Mitch Marner but he wouldn’t sign for 7 years, he wanted to do 3 or 4, and Columbus said ‘No, were not doing that.’

Lamoriello vs. Dubas

Friedman added that it will be interesting to see how GM Lou Lamoriello handles all of this. Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas took a lot of heat for giving out such rich contracts, but if there was pressure coming in the form of an offer sheet while he negotiated them, one has to assume Lamoriello will be dealing with the same kinds of pressures. Will this make Dubas look like a chump? Or, is this the way these contracts will go now for RFA’s no matter who the GM is?

Related: Islanders Interested in Taylor Hall?

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