Edited Jun. 16, 2021 at 11:26 a.m.
Quoting: Dzinger18
Coleman won't sign for that. Any other team will pay him way more or he'll just stay in Tampa. This team isn't a contender anyways, just painfully average. Depth still isn't great either. This team just simply isn't in a position right now where they can build into a proper contender. With this, they're just a bit better than the team they are now. The farthest I can see them going is 2nd round at best.
Before the Covid suspension last year, the Blues were 2nd in the NHL in standings (also without Tarasenko). I don't think it's outlandish to consider the Blues a contender in the West. Are they behind Vegas and Colorado right now? Absolutely. But guess what? Colorado and Vegas are going to be up against that cap crunch and both have several players hitting FA (Landeskog, for one. Makar is a RFA, as well, so if the Blues or another Western team wanted to severely screw COL over, they could easily offer Makar an OS that would make life very difficult for Sakic and Co). With a flat cap, a lot of teams will be taking a step back in 2022. The Blues have the luxury of some big contracts coming off the books in Bozak, Schwartz, and Hoffman. If they can land a guy like Hamilton to replace what Pietrangelo was able to do here (as great as Pietro was for the Blues, that's not an unachievable task for someone like Dougie), they're going to be right back in that mix.
ROR, Perron, Schenn, Faulk, Krug, (healthy) Parayko, Thomas, Kyrou, Sundqvist and Barbashev are all very good players to build around. An infusion of youth and some of these prospects the Blues have been banking on for their future -- Kostin, Perunovich, Neighbors, Joshua, Blais -- will have the Blues right where they've been over the last decade. They're consistently contenders and as we've seen from the likes of Montreal and NYI (hell, even Carolina), a solid system with good goaltending can get you to the top, or very close.