Yesterday was the NHL’s deadline for qualifying offers, and thus a time of much excitement for hockey nerds.
In the NHL, a “qualifying offer” is a one-year contract offer that a team makes to players whose contracts are about to run out, but who aren’t automatically unrestricted free agents. This covers most NHLers at the end of a contract who are between ages 20 and 26. By offering a QO, the team gets to keep the player’s rights as an RFA—meaning other teams can only get at the player by signing them to an offer sheet, a thing that almost never happens.