Offer sheets are useless. They never happen and they never work. We still have no real idea why ours happened with Aho. Why anyone on the main board thinks they’re going to steal a great young player for cheap is beyond me. You’d do what you have to do so Johnson or someone like that moves on before you’d lose a Cirelli or Sergachev to an offer sheet.
Well, we have an idea, but we'll never know for sure. What we do know.
1) Waddell / Dundon wanted a longer term deal 7-8 years. Aho wanted a shorter term deal.
2) It was reported that Aho's agent was at around $9M-$9.5M, Waddell/Dundon were at $7.5
3) Waddell commented that they expected the negotiations to last long into the off-season.
4) The general hockey community thought the Canes would have trouble swallowing a large signing bonus contract structure.
Those things we know to be certain, or at least mostly true. Given all that, I think Aho and his agent decided that they didn't want an 7-8 year deal and weren't going to let it drag out through the summer, so they used an offer-sheet to get it done asap, at terms to their liking. It was a negotiation tactic with a very slight chance the Canes wouldn't match.
As for why MTL did it? They probably figured why not give it a try (they tried Point also if you recall but Point wouldn't sign it) as it was a cheap way to get young talent. The agent convinced MTL that if it was a contract was a lot of guaranteed, upfront money, the Canes might balk so there was a chance he could end up with Aho and not give up a ton of picks.
I don't think it was any more complicated than that.