At this point, even if they did one or two things incorrectly or questionably, they won their cup. Sure they could be better but I think its unjustified.

This is since their cup

Yeah I know, I was just talking generally

Binnington is a lot better goalie than Allen. Allen never won the starting job. It was handed to him. He then proceeded to lose the starting job to every backup the Blues brought in.

Allen is and always has been a head case.

Pietrangelo is the one who chose to leave.

The fact is Pietrangelo moved his family over a 1000 miles away to a new city because he was scared without having a NMC he would be forced to move his family perhaps a 1000 miles away to a new city....

Makes so much sense..

Pietrangelo moved because ST.Louis cheeped out, he wanted to stay. They spent their money on all the wrong guys.

hindsight is 20/20. I know Allen is playing great now. But St. Louis gave him 6 years to prove himself as the number 1 guy, and he routinely got outplayed by his backups and was inconsistent. Can't blame St. Louis for giving up on him, after they gave him every opportunity for years

With Doug Armstrong, you take the good with the bad. Since the cup, his decisions have been questionable, but he also built that cup team through drafts, trades, and FA. We also don't know the full story on Pietrangelo (Blues offered the same money over 8 years and worked a long time to try to get a deal done); we know that Allen as a 4.35m backup wasn't feasible and Binner was the guy to keep at the time (still is IMO); and we know that the ownership group isn't satisfied with just winning one cup. If his instructions were to keep the team a contender, a lot of his moves make sense. And they'll also bite them in the rear in a few years, those concepts aren't mutually exclusive.

You’re free to think this I guess but it’s not true. I can do the numbers to show you it wasn’t about the money. He left because Army wouldn’t give a full NMC for the duration of the contract.

It’s ego. Pietrangelo felt he’d earned that and Army doesn’t give full NMC’s as part of his GM philosophy. He was willing to give a NMC for part of the contract but not the whole thing.

The silly part is a full NMC doesn’t guarantee a player stays no matter what. Backes had a full NMC with Boston. He got to ride some buses in the minors before accepting a trade.

Nobody will argue that Pietrangelo is better than Faulk. But take off the homer glasses as to why he left.

What did STL offer AP contractually? NMCs do add a layer of protection for players as they’re needed to waive them in order to be waived to the minors or traded. Do they waive them? Yes, but it allows them to be in the driver seat like OEL this offseason.

Blues offered 8x8=64 million
He accepted 7x8.8=61.6 million

It’s not about the money. If truth be told, and this is my own personal guess, my opinion is Pietrangelo or his agent probably felt the Blues would cave to the full NMC but Army didn’t.

There’s arguments ton both sides of that coin. Like was it worth it for Army and Pietrangelo to die on opposite sides of the NMC? That’s a completely different discussion than saying “the Blues went cheap “ etc...

I've disagreed with pretty much every decision the Blues have made since winning the cup. I disagreed with the Faulk extension, I disagreed with letting Pietrangelo walk, I disagreed with trading Allen and I disagree now with the Binnington extension.

However, I don't know how much better this team is with all of those decisions reversed than it is right now. Pietrangelo has been horrible in Vegas and Faulk has been elite this year in St. Louis. I don't expect that to continue but having Pietrangelo being bad for one of his last prime years is not ideal. Binnington hasn't been great, but Allen also had that opportunity with the Blues a million times as well and he never ran with it. I think Allen's a great goalie and I'm not surprised it's working somewhere else, but it was never going to work here.

And saying the Blues should have kept Allen would have meant trading Binnington last offseason instead, because "managing our money properly" would mean knowing we didn't have the cap space to have both on the roster this year at nearly 10 million and make all these other moves you want to make (like keeping Pietrangelo and still signing Krug), and if you're saying we should have traded Binnington last offseason that's just ridiculous hindsight-ing, and his value would have been insanely low then anyway after the bubble. In actuality the Blues should have probably not extended either of them.

That said, Scandella >>> Edmundson, and I don't think Scandella is anything special, but Eddy is just sidecar-ing to Petry's Norris-worthy campaign right now. Scandella's contract is too long but so would Edmundson's have been.