Yes, I know. I love Gards and my fellow Canes fans have started to come around on him, too. I'm just pointing out that their contract structures are similar, in that they're back-loaded deals designed for players to fit into Cup-contending rosters.

Crap your right

This probably has something to do with the Blues saving money immediately following the virus and all of the lost revenue that comes with it.

Any clues as to why this was done now? What was the rush?

Now its worth the second rounder for him.

If this is any indication of what demelo will get then demelo likely falls under 3.75M for the same term

What a horrible contract. For the blues sake I hope he proves me wrong.

I’m not really sure who has room for petro next year. As far as contenders go, I don’t see any.

I think DeMelo gets a 3 years at around 3.5M

I think the Blues are in win-now mode and they're willing to overpay a little, but that doesn't really explain the term. He's already 30! I'm worried this is Karl Alzner 2.0-similar age, similar numbers. That one immediately backfired.

I can see MTL, NYI, and PIT all showing strong interest. All 3 could be contenders next season and beyond. All 3 could free up cap space with a trade or two.

What did Armstong see in Scandella?

Alzner had crappy analytics even back when the Habs signed him to that deal. Scandella's is actually quite good, especially since his move to Montreal and then St. Louis. This is a pretty solid contract, actually.

This signing means he'll trade picks to Seattle for them to take him instead of a younger cheaper unprotected guy. Smart and stupid at the same time.

if they trade allen and bozak and cbo steen its possible.

Def. possible. I'd still consider STL the overwhelming favorite to re-sign Pietrangelo. He's probably looking at a $2M-$2.5M raise. His new contract should have a similar AAV to Josi and higher than guys like Trouba, OEL, and Spurgeon, albeit with slightly less term. I'm thinking $9M AAV for six years is fair for both sides. He could possibly get 7 years and an extra $500k on the open market, but his age is def. a factor.

Like you said, Bozak is almost definitely gonna be traded in this scenario. Allen is a more valuable chip, but they might not have any other options unless there's a CBO. In that case, Steen is probably gone. He still has value as a solid 4th liner though. Maybe they can use a buyout and then re-sign him to a league-minimum 1 year deal.

If this was 2 or 3 years for this player, I think it would think it was solid for a team needing to add a guy to round out their top 4, and that 4th year really wouldn't be all that bad.

However given the uncertainty over the cap, and the fact that this likely all but guarantees St. Louis is going to be weaker next year in some way, I don't think this was all that smart of a signing right now.

The Blues don't have a lot of easy to move contracts if the cap stays flat or comes down. The contracts they would like to move are likely Faulk, Steen, Allen or even Schenn's (despite a good season, his age and cap hit and term don't look great for that signing). None of those will be easy to move with the level of uncertainty and potential for a very short "offseason".

So that means this team is likely selling low on value contracts, or just letting Petro walk. Either will be a pretty big step back.

Queue the Leafs armchair GM pages trying to sign Pietrangelo with under 3 mill in cap.

My gut says that behind the scenes both Pietrangelo's agent and Armstrong are simply playing a game of chicken while biding their time. No ill will intended towards either side but at the same time they have no urgency to get this done while so much is up in the air still.

We don't even know the state of the NHL yet so really their's nothing to get overly worked up about. We need a couple dominoes to fall in order to get things to start to move faster. At that time you'll have a better idea of whether the possibility of Pietrangelo not resigning is a real threat or not.

Scandella resigning is probably something that was going to happen one way or another which leads me to believe that other moves, aside from the idea of Pietrangelo not resigning, are going to happen anyway. Looking at STL's current cap situation shouldn't be a guaranteed indicator of what happens with Pietrangelo. So while Scandella's contract changes what STL's cap looks like for next year as of now, much can change from now till when the point of signing Pietrangelo also.

Probably to other teams... but with the blues he helped us out immensely since he is a defensive defense man that we didn't really have before

It's only the first of many backloaded deals, due to escrow next year

I'm not sure I can recall a contract where the "No" votes were as overwhelming.

Ah yes, the contract that cost St Louis Pietrangelo! Thanks Armstrong