There is a grapevine that quietly operates within senior NHL management circles and, from week-to-week, you never know what might be the hot topic of conversation. But lately, a lot of the chatter has been about offer sheets and the possibility that you might actually see – not just one, but multiple offer sheets this summer. A brief refresher on the topic: Offer sheets are a mechanism by which any team can sign another team’s restricted free agent and depending upon the dollar value of the contract, would then be obliged to provide draft choice compensation in return.



Offer sheets have been around forever, but are rarely deployed – just three times in the past 10 years, and none since the Calgary Flames’ unsuccessful attempt to sign Ryan O’Reilly away from the Colorado Avalanche in February, 2013.



There are a handful of different theories to explain why you see so few offer sheets in the NHL, some involving collusion, but the main reason...