STL Blues TDL Hughes

Team: 2022-23 St. Louis Blues

Initial Creation Date: Jan. 31, 2023

Published: Feb. 1, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

It's time for the Blues to rebuild. The current roster is mess of solid to elite players who do not compliment each other. Krug is an elite offensive defenseman on a team that desperately needs stalwart defense. Scandella and Leddy fill holes in the second and third pairings, but the team has a huge void at 1LHD.

Currently, Armstrong appears to be trying to build a team around Thomas and Kyrou. Building around single-dimensional skilled players is a flawed strategy (11 years of Brett Hull/Blues and zero trips to conference finals or McDavid/EDM, Matthews/Mariner/TOR are great examples). Building around an elite young defenseman makes far more sense, e.g. Makar, Petro, Hedman, McAvoy. Hence, I'd go all in on Luke Hughes.

With these moves, you have the cap space to be competitive while your young prospects - Thomas, Neighbors, Bolduc, Snuggerud, Knies, and Hughes mature and this year's draft will yield two more 1sts.

With that cap space, I'd sign Ryan Graves this off-season and then pursue two veteran forwards to bolster the line-up and provide maturity to the locker room. It may be unrealistic, but Okposo and Killorn come immediately to mind. I'd also consider Barbashev, Sundqvist, and ROR, if they are available.

The overall team confidence is at rock bottom. Adding the UFAs mentioned above and/or others like them could go a long way to changing the mindset on this team. Face it, Parayko is a rehab project. Nobody will take that contract right now. The Blues have to get him back on track, and I think they can, but he's trying to do too much, more than he's capable of, and he lacks the resilience to bounce back when he fails. Surround him with better (more responsible, predictable) teammates and he may turn things around.

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