Hurricanes threaten Oilers with an offer sheet.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a spicy one.

While it has been a relatively quiet offseason in the National Hockey League so far it would now appear that the truth of what has been going on behind the scenes could not be more different than the perception from the outside looking in.

On Sunday, NHL insider Elliotte Friedman dropped a bombshell when he revealed that the Edmonton Oilers had received the threat of a potential offer sheet courtesy of the Carolina Hurricanes.

"Carolina did a lot of things that are now coming to the surface to show that they are willing to be aggressive," revealed Friedman on the 32 Thoughts podcast. "The reason Evan Bouchard's extension got done in Edmonton so quickly was because they threatened the Oilers with an offer sheet."

In the end of course the Oilers would end up signing Bouchard to a lucrative new deal, a 4 year contract with an average annual value and cap hit of $10.5 million per season, so no harm done right? Well not exactly.

According to Friedman, the threat from the Hurricanes may have actually done significant damage by forcing the Oilers to significantly increase their offer to get pen to paper.

"We'll find out someday what the truth is there, I think a lot of people believed that Bouchard was gonna come in at 4x$9.5 million... and I think the fact that the Hurricanes were lurking around there got that deal to 4x$10.5 millon," revealed Friedman.

The Oilers are of course a team that is right up against the salary cap, and one that will have to prepare for a future where star forward Connor McDavid is due what is expected to be the largest payday in NHL history, and losing an additional million against the cap each year is a tough spot for them to be in.

According to Friedman it was only after Bouchard was off the table that the Hurricanes pivoted to defenseman K'Andre Miller, who at the time was a member of the New York Rangers, with that situation eventually ending in Miller being traded to the Hurricanes.

Who knows however how Bouchard's additional money, money that is now believed to have come as a direct result of a potential offer sheet, may impact the Oilers cap situation moving forward over the next 4 years.