Well with these players, I'd recommend these lines:

Tarasenko - O'Reilly - Palmieri
Schwartz - Schenn - Perron
Steen - Bozak - Thomas
Brouwer - Barbashev - Sundqvist

Dunn - Pietrangelo
Bouwmeester - Parayko
Gunnarsson - Faulk

Binnington
Allen

At least make them retain salary.

Exactly. There is only one guy scratched and they are already over the cap. Fix it

Maybe dealing Allen makes it happen, but they'll still need/want a good back up

Too much to give by a good margin, hurts our ability to re-up Petro and it's just silly to buyout Sanford. No thanks.

Perron goes with ROR, Faulk goes with Petro when everyone's fit and Brouwer has been waived.

Don't need them too. Tarasenko is on LTIR and likely won't be back until the playoffs, when the cap rules don't apply. So we have his $7.5mil to play with. This would be our playoff roster.

whoops...my bad

Palmieri has 2 years left. They don't need his salary retained this year, but certainly will next year.

Blais way too important and good.

True but we've got cap decisions to make in the offseason anyway, Palmieri wouldn't overtly challenge that. Pietrangelo hasn't been re-signed- maybe he walks and there's a bunch of money for Palmieri there. Maybe we trade Allen or Bozak, or maybe Palmieri isn't a great fit and we trade him in the offseason anyway (which, if we did this, is what we should do). Or maybe they retain salary, but that'll likely drive the price up.



This is also very true

How does Palmieri not affect that? Petro will be resigned and they already have to trade guys like Allen, Steen, Bozak, etc. (Not all of them, but I'm sure you get the point)
Not only do they have to resign Petro, but Dunn as well. Also a backup replacement if Allen is traded via UFA. Bouwmeester may not retire yet and might be resigned around 1M. You have to keep in mind the salary increases for Faulk and Schenn. Having NJD retain at least 2M in this deal would help matters significantly. I honestly believe Saad would be a better fit than Palmieri while being retained, but that's just my opinion.

Basically I'm looking at it like this- as things stand, we have a lot of flexibility this year to add pretty much whoever we want- Palmieri, Krieder, whatever- without any retention due to Tarasenko's injury. Also, as things currently stand, whoever we add at the deadline we cannot keep past this year. In fact, as you are pointing out, we have to shed some salary from somewhere next year no matter what because of Schenn and Faulk increases, Dunn and the other RFAs, and hopefully Pietrangelo (which, you act like that's a for sure thing but it definitely is not, and that's coming from someone who thinks this team is no longer a serious cup contender without Pietrangelo). Trading some combination of those three guys (Allen, Bozak, Steen) is going to be tough as well considering their cap hits, trade protection on the latter two, and overall history of play on the former, and some may require sweetners, which means dipping into our asset pool which is already kinda thin.

So if we trade for Palmieri, it is with the knowledge that unless he just goes off and wins the Con Smythe or something, we will want to (and have to) trade him again in the offseason just to START the process of making the cap work next year (with a re-signed Pietrangelo), because he has the most trade value. And from what I tell just by fiddling around on my own Armchair GM team, that's with max 50% retention from New Jersey. And that's not to mention the roster spots we might want to have available for say, Jordan Kyrou next year. So if we don't need the retention for this year, and we're trading him before the start of next year's season, and we may have to pay assets to get rid of Allen, Bozak, and/or Steen, why would we pay New Jersey additional assets so that they would retain salary? I already think Blais is too much and there's no salary retained on here. I think paying a moderate price for a full cap hit of Palmieri and then flipping him for assets in the offseason is a much better plan asset management-wise.

I can't see us trading with the Blackhawks. And personally, I don't want to trade for anyone. The Blues are top of the west with like a six point lead and we've still got players coming back from injury, we don't need anyone, and bringing in rentals to play a significant role doesn't really work ever.

This

The one problem with this idea, no, make that two (possible) problems would be:

1. How would this move be viewed by other players? Does Palmieri (and/or) others look at it as a "dick" move to acquire then flip? Perhaps. Does that hurt the Blues organization long-run for potential future players? That's a hard one to answer.

2. If you gamble on being able to acquire and then flip Palmieri, can you? And if you can, do you end up losing on the bet regarding what someone is willing to send back to you compared to what you gave up to attain him? I see no reason why your idea would be implausible, but I just ask, is it wise?

Woah - my perception of Blais must be much different, because there's a 0% chance I would include him in this trade. Replace him for Sanford and I could be on board.

No it's not wise. Palmieri makes no sense to this team for a bunch of reasons. Apart of his cap hit and retention and term, what NJ will want for him that we don't have, and the fact that the Blues have been doing very well without help and whatnot, he's a righty. We're loaded with RWs, this team really needs another dedicated LW behind Schwartz for the playoffs if they need anything. Maybe Palmieri can switch sides, but seems like a weird thing to try and make work considering all the other stuff I talked about having to do with him in the offseason. I was just trying to frame everything under the guise of "if we went and got Palmieri" since that was the basic premise of this thread. I don't think we should do it, I don't think the Blues should make a deadline deal at all actually.

I don't worry too much about offending players with trades. Maybe if you sign a free agent, play him for a year and then trade him, that's a little crummy (looking at Carolina w/ Calvin De Haan here). But in general, it's a business, players get traded all the time. We traded Perron once, signed him back and then immediately left him exposed in the expansion draft, before signing him back yet again, so he didn't seem to take it too hard. Meanwhile, we let Fabbri rot for a whole year and some change before we traded him when there was clearly no role for him here, and finally trading him was clearly a mercy act as he's now almost a PPG with Detroit. And I'm sure Joel Edmundson wasn't thrilled about getting shipped out of a team that had just won the Stanley Cup. But, it happens.

Again though, stressing that I don't think we should do anything with Kyle Palmieri at all. Just saying if we did, we don't have the cap room to keep him at any price, retention or not, next year unless Pietrangelo goes, so we'd have to trade him regardless, and therefore there's no need to pay NJ more to retain, which was my original comment.

Solid points throughout. I totally agree with: