NHL Free Agents 2011: 9 Largest Restricted Free Agent Offer Sheets Signed

The offer sheet is one of the most complicated parts of free agency in the NHL.

Organizations do have a chance to match offer sheets, but can receive draft picks and cash in return for players lost depending on the salary that the departing player is signed for.

Deciding whether or not to match an offer sheet can be a big roll of the dice for a franchise.

How will things affect your team? Will you be overpaying the player? Who might you have to let go in order to make room for the salary?

Restricted free agency can have a strong impact on a team's future, so let's have a look at the nine largest restricted free agency offer sheet signed, and their impact.

Keith Tkachuk

The Winnipeg Jets were in financial ruin thanks to some pretty horrendous ownership in the mid-90s, and were all but gone unless a miracle happened.

That miracle didn't happen, and it seemed that teams possibly thought that with the Jets moving out of Winnipeg, perhaps they might be less willing to keep one of their prized players.

The Chicago Blackhawks signed Tkachuk to an offer sheet good for five years and $17.2 million, hoping to give their team the extra boost it needed to get deep into the playoffs.

Undeterred by the fact that the team was bound to leave at the end of the season, the Jets matched the offer and kept Tkachuk, who move to Phoenix with the team a year later.

Niklas Hjalmarsson

After the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 2010, the Blachkawks front office knew that they were going to have to make several tough decisions regarding their roster because of how close they were to the salary cap.

Niklas Hjalmarsson was given a qualifying offer from the Blackhawks but wasn't in deep contract talks because the Blackhawks were more concerned with what was going to happen in arbitration with young goalie Antti Niemi.

Unsuspectingly, the San Jose Sharks jumped into the picture and signed Hjalmarsson to an offer sheet for four years and $14 million.

The Blackhawks were essentially forced to choose between matching Hjalmarsson's sheet or staying with Antti Niemi, who was absolutely essential in helping them to win the Stanley Cup.

Chicago matched Hjalmarsson's offer sheet and was forced to trade Niemi, ironically enough to the Sharks, and had struggles in the crease this past season.

Losing Niemi as a result of Hjalmarsson's offer sheet was a big blow to the team that really kept them from having a very good shot at defending their championship.

Brendan Shanahan

Yes, that is a very old picture of Brendan Shanahan.

Many people forget that Shanahan played for the Blues, he even had two 50 goal seasons for St. Louis. His career started, however, in New Jersey.

St. Louis signed Shanahan to an offer sheet and ended up having to go through arbitration to figure out what they would have to give up for compensation.

At the end of the day, the arbitrator sent Scott Stevens over to New Jersey as compensation for the signing of Brendan Shanahan.

This was a move that ended up not working out for the Blues in the long run as the loss of Stevens provided more of a void than Shanahan could fill. So Shanahan was traded to the Hartford Whalers in exchange for Chris Pronger.

Stevens, on the other hand, stayed in New Jersey for the rest of his career and went on to win three Stanley Cups and earned the reputation as one of the toughest and best defenders to ever play the game.

Sergei Fedorov

Sergei Fedorov was a huge part of the Detroit Red Wings' Stanley Cup Championship team of 1997, and he knew it.

This knowledge led to a very long and drawn out contract dispute for the then restricted free agent that pushed all the way into February of the following season.

The Carolina Hurricanes ended up doing Detroit's work for them by offering him a six year contract worth $38 million that was very front loaded.

The Red Wings matched this contract, Fedorov came back to the team and helped Detroit in their quest to repeat as champions.

This had an impact on the structure of the restricted free agency rules because if this situation presented itself today, Fedorov would not have been allowed to play.

Currently, if a restricted free agent doesn't sign with a team by the first of December, they are ineligible to play for any team for the rest of the season.

Might Detroit have won the Stanley Cup that year even without Fedorov? Possibly, but thanks to the rules back then we will never know.

Craig Simpson

Craig Simpson was part of the last two Stanley Cup Championship teams of the vaunted Edmonton Oilers franchise.

He was also at the center of one of the most contentious restricted free agency battles that the league has ever seen.

In 1993, Simpson signed an offer sheet from the San Jose Sharks that was for three years at $3.09 million. The number was not the strange part, the structure was.

The Sharks were trying to be very sneaky with this contract and exploit a loophole in the process by offering the majority of the contract as a signing bonus while giving him a very small annual salary. So small that it would have prevented them from giving the Oilers anything back for compensation.

The salary would have been approximately $200,000 a year, even though the grand total of the contract was a tiny bit over $1 million a year.

Gary Bettman voided the offer and an arbitrator upheld the decision which led to a restructuring of the rules for restricted free agents.

Simpson ended up being traded to Buffalo and played only two seasons, both of which he played fewer than 25 games.

Simpson retired after his second year in Buffalo due to injury, making us all wonder what would have happened if he had just stayed in Edmonton.

Chris Gratton

The Chris Gratton deal with the Philadelphia Flyers started out with the Flyers signing Gratton to an offer sheet for five years worth $16.5 million.

This whole thing was quite messy and actually involved the Chicago Blackhawks, as well.  The Hawks claimed they had a deal with the Lightning.

The Lightning, who were up for sale at the time, tried to back up the Blackhawks by saying that the Flyers' offer sheet was smudged in the fax and therefore invalid.

After arbitration, the Flyers won out.

In the end, the Flyers worked the whole thing into a trade in order to avoid giving up the four first round draft picks they would have had to have given to the Lightning for compensation and sent Mikael Renberg to the Lighting, destroying the Flyers' "Legion of Doom" line that dominated the NHL the year before.

This deal ended up really destroying the careers of both Gratton and Renberg who never played up to the expectations that had been set for them since.

The Lightning essentially lost out on several first round picks, plus saw their own third overall pick turn into a bust, and the Flyers lost one of the most dominant lines their franchise had ever seen and probably a couple more chances at the Stanley Cup.

Tomas Vanek

Kevin Lowe, GM of the Edmonton Oilers, has made use of the offer sheet a couple of very notable times during his tenure in Edmonton.

The first one he tried was an unsuccessful attempt to take Tomas Vanek away from the Buffalo Sabres.

It's no secret to people that follow hockey that the Sabres are in a rather small hockey market and are not the richest of the teams in the league.

Edmonton hoped to exploit that when they signed Vanek to the largest offer sheet ever offered to a player. It was for seven years worth $50 million.

Not phased by the whole thing, the Sabres immediately matched the offer.

This particular offer sheet definitely drove the prices up on the free agent market for the rest of the players, which is something that didn't make too many GMs very happy.

Dustin Penner

It would be obvious to a blind man why people are so interested in having Dustin Penner on their team. The guy is the absolute essence of a power forward and is a commanding presence on the ice.

Teams learned that when he helped the Ducks to their Stanley Cup in 2007, his second year in the NHL.

When he became a restricted free agent, Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe decided that he must have him.

After unsuccessfully taking a run at Tomas Vanek, the Oilers managed to acquire Penner through an offer sheet that sparked a war of words that mostly starred then Anaheim GM Brian Burke.

The contract was for five years and worth $21.5 million dollars, a lot for a second year guy who hadn't yet crossed the 30 goal mark.

Burke absolutely assaulted Lowe with name-calling over the next weeks, and made several assertions as to what Lowe had done with these two contracts.

Burke had said that Lowe had "thrown a grenade at the other 29 teams in the league" with the two offer sheets he put together that off-season, saying:

"

"You go right now from entry-level to what used to be the third contract, thanks to two offer sheets from Kevin Lowe."

"

This actually holds a lot of water, if you think about it. How often do you see these guys take a middle of the road "continuation contract," if you will?

Kevin Lowe's two offer sheets to Vanek and Penner really created what we are seeing now with these huge 10 year extensions to very young players.

Lowe really had a giant impact on the game with these.

Joe Sakic

The off-season of 1997 might have been the most frightening moment for all Colorado Avalanche fans because of Sakic's free agent status.

The Avalanche played things very intelligently by allowing Sakic to play the market because they knew they had the right to match any offer made.

After a bit of time, the New York Rangers came up with an absolute bombshell of an offer that made all of Avalanche nation hold their breath.

The Rangers signed Joe Sakic to an offer sheet that was for three years, but was worth an amazing $21 million and included a $15 million signing bonus.

Just before their time to match had run out, the Avalanche did match the offer and kept Sakic an Avalanche for the rest of his career.

The widespread impact of this offer sheet was felt, however; as it made the going rate for a superstar player $7 million a year, which was unprecedented at the time.

Many believe that this was the real start of the huge escalation of salaries in the NHL that ultimately led to the second lock-out.

Kevin Goff is a Featured Columnist for the Colorado Avalanche and is a member of Bleacher Report's 2011 NHL Draft Team.  For more NHL news and discussion,

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