NHL Twitter Mailbag: Which Team Is Winning the Offseason?

We're getting close to August, which has become about the only month on the calendar when nothing hockey-related happens. July doesn't have a lot either, but there is free agency, arbitration and usually a few trades.

In August, it's pretty much impossible to get any hockey person on the phone. Everybody is on vacation and doesn't want to be bothered. Until then, we can still talk some hockey.

A few signings and minor trades continue to trickle in, and there are always barstool debates to be had, too. That means it's time for another NHL Twitter Mailbag, where I take questions from Twitter followers and paste them in here. 

Let's get started.

"

@adater Which team has won the off-season?

— Luke Palmisano (@lucasthejames) July 20, 2016"

Though they didn't add a big name through a trade and didn't draft some can't-miss kid, I still say the Tampa Bay Lightning won the offseason.

Rather than losing star center Steven Stamkos to free agency, Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman not only persuaded him to stay, but got him to sign a deal that wouldn't break the team's budget. Stamkos could have earned more than the $68 million over eight years he received from the Bolts, but Yzerman convinced him it would be worth more to remain where he was.

Yzerman won Stamkos over even after several teams wined and dined him for a few days during the so-called "courtship" period before July 1. Stamkos could have easily been swept off his feet from all the attention, and as CBC Sports' Tim Wharnsby noted, boy, did a couple of teams really want him.

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press/Associated Press

After locking up Stamkos, Yzerman then proceeded to hand an eight-year, $63 million extension to stud No. 1 defenseman Victor Hedman. Hedman could have become an unrestricted free agent after this coming season and would have gotten mega-offers elsewhere, but Yzerman likewise convinced him to stay in Tampa Bay.

Yzerman also signed Alex Killorn to a seven-year, $31.15 million deal, and General Fanager indicates that he still has about $8.5 million in salary-cap space remaining to sign restricted free agent Nikita Kucherov.

Lightning players must be very excited to get the 2016-17 season underway. After back-to-back trips to the Eastern Conference Final, Yzerman managed to keep the band together this offseason.

Other contenders for this award: Calgary (trading for Brian Elliott, signing Troy Brouwer, drafting Matthew Tkachuk), New Jersey (acquiring Taylor Hall, signing Ben Lovejoy) and Florida (getting D-men Keith Yandle and Jason Demers).

From the "a broken clock is still right twice a day" school of thought, I'm going with the Edmonton Oilers. Many of us look foolish for buying the Oilers of recent times, but there's reason to believe these guys will be more competitive this season.

They brought in Milan Lucic as a free agent and acquired Adam Larsson from New Jersey. Yeah, they probably gave up too much (Taylor Hall) to get Larsson, but they needed to bring a promising D-man in, and Larsson fits the bill.

Connor McDavid now has a year of experience under his belt and is going to be a monster player. Some of their younger D-men (Darnell Nurse, Brandon Davidson) could finally be ready to contribute. 

The Oilers have to become a winner again eventually. I expect that to start happening this season.

"

@adater If you could change three things about the NHL tomorrow, what would they be and why?

— Jake (@Ruggz_) July 20, 2016"

Hmm, I'm Gary Bettman for a day, eh? And my decisions are binding? 

I'll start with making the regular-season schedule a little shorter. I'll go with 70 games instead of 82. Let's end the regular season early in March, not April, and let's make sure the Stanley Cup Final goes no later than mid-May.

Why compete with the NBA Finals in mid-June? Why not carve out more exclusive territory for your best product while the other sport is just starting its postseason?

Oh, and no more preseason games. Blech.

Second, I'd keep players in the penalty box for the duration of their minor penalties—even if a goal is scored. Get called for two minutes? You're in the box for that full two minutes in my league. That way, I get more offense back in the game, and I make rules infractions cost more.

Finally, I'd make the nets slightly bigger. They are currently six feet wide and four feet high. I'd make them 6'1" wide and 4'1" high. I don't want soccer nets out there, but a few more inches should be reasonable.

Goalies have gotten so much preferential treatment in recent years, both in terms of bigger and better equipment than in the old days and rules to penalize contact with them. It's time to give something to the offensive guys.

The following question, which comes from @Kevinlacy22, was sent as a direct message. I thought it was an interesting one, so I reproduced it here:

Q: Hey Adrian, could it be construed as tampering if a team tells one of their own players that they have traded them, but intend to sign them back as an unrestricted free agent that offseason? The Roman Polak signing brought this back into my mind. Before he had been traded by the Maple Leafs before the trade deadline, it was publicly speculated that the Leafs would just temporarily trade him, only to bring him back via UFA the following season. I know that the Blues did this same thing with Doug Weight in 2006 and I always thought that was fishy. If they really did tell the player this, is it technically not tampering as they held their rights at the time before trading?

John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports

A: I think it's a good question, and I have no doubt the spirit of the "no tampering" rule has been broken before—perhaps again with Polak. But how do you police against a player and team making some secret, behind-the-scenes agreement to do business together again after a trade?

I definitely think there should be a rule preventing teams from re-signing a player they traded less than a year ago.

If you're a really good player, you can say to your GM, "OK, so we'll do it like this: You get a bunch of prospects, picks or established players for me, I'll go try and win a Cup with my new team, then I'll come back and sign with you and play with all the guys you got for me."

Indeed, Weight did re-sign as a free agent with St. Louis in 2006 just a few months after the Blues dealt him to Carolina, where he won a Stanley Cup. The Blues received a handful of prospects and draft picks for Weight, then got him right back in July.

I don't like it. I think St. Louis should have been ineligible to sign Weight in that case. After one full year, it's fine by me if a player re-signs as a free agent with a team that traded him, but not before then.

The same thing happened this season with Polak. The Maple Leafs traded him and Nick Spaling to San Jose at the deadline for two second-round picks and veteran Raffi Torres. They then brought Polak back this summer in free agency, signing him to a one-year deal.

The optics aren't good. The obvious perception is that teams and players are cooking up these wink-wink deals. A rule needs to be introduced to stop them.

It's a combination of things, but the bottom-line reason: They don't work.

Teams almost always match any offer sheet given to one of their players. Nashville did it with Shea Weber, Colorado did it with Ryan O'Reilly, etc.

The last time a team did not match an offer sheet for one of its players was Anaheim in 2007, when Edmonton gave Dustin Penner a five-year, $21.25 million offer. The Ducks accepted first-, second- and third-round Oilers picks in the 2008 draft as compensation, which former Anaheim GM Brian Burke largely traded away, leaving the team with little of value in return.

O'Reilly, in 2013, is the last player in the NHL to have received an offer sheet from another team as a restricted free agent. The team making the offer sheet typically has to give up multiple picks while also earning the unrelenting enmity from the team it tried to raid, thus making the strategy highly unpalatable.

In the pre-salary-cap days, offer sheets were a bit more common. Remember Joe Sakic signing a three-year, $21 million offer sheet with the Rangers in 1997?. The Avalanche matched it. 

It may look enticing—"Hey, go throw a bunch of money at so and so. What's the harm?"—but the way the system is set up, it just isn't worth the bother.

Adrian Dater covers the NHL for Bleacher Report.