I hope you're prepared for us to give up 4-5 goals a game at minimum with that defense. Good news is we'll probably score 3

That doesn't get you Chychrun, but even if it did- there's just no reason to trade for Chychrun if you're not going to compete while he's on this current contract. The whole reason his price is so high is because he outproduces a contract he's on for the next two years, not because he's some silver bullet defender. He alone doesn't make this team competitive if you're not meaningfully replacing the guys you've sold off this year up front, so you're not getting the benefit you're paying a high price for.

Faber is virtually untouchable for Minnesota. Let alone for a Dman that they cant afford to have on the team the next two years.

I think the blues bring in a defensive minded coach to help out. Montgomery was a huge loss, look at how we were last year with him and how the bruins are now. I think it’s coaching scheme.

The top 9 isn’t a bad lineup it will produce and with more offensive players on backend I think you see guys producing more for the team

It's not a good lineup either, and while I have no doubt the defensemen would score more you would be hard pressed to convince me that they would score enough to outpace how bad defensively the all are, especially if Binnington enters year 3 of (to put it charitably) inconsistency.

There are Some d men in FA this summer that could be picked up to help defensively but with the NTC on every d man it’s hard to think of any options that make it reasonable off-season when strengthening the back end

You're right, it is unreasonable to think they could strengthen the blue line in one off season, especially in the "good defensively" column. But why does that make it a smart move to acquire primarily offensive backend threats? Barrie I can understand, you're moving Parayko to the Oilers you need to take cap back, he's cheap-ish and he's gone next year. Fair enough.

But getting Chychrun improves the blue line in an area that wasn't their biggest problem for two years on a team that's going nowhere. You pay a lot of assets to have him cost controlled, and then don't compete while he's cost controlled. You then have to extend him presumably long term in his 27+ age seasons. That is more or less what we did with Krug/Faulk/Parayko (they were a touch older, but not much). Why is that worth it for this team? Why improve the blue line at all, especially with a question mark in goal and lots more up front? Why not just make the picks and build the defense from the ground up?

This ACGM is called "rebuilding" but trading for two cheap years of a good defenseman does not strike me as a rebuilding move.

I think chychrun long term is the way to go having him faulk and perunovich as your offensive guys on the back end plus chychrun is in the age group that DA wants. I also think you can teach offensive guys defense better than defensive guys offense. In 2-3 years you’ll hopefully have buldoc and snuggy up on the team with whoever we get this year.

If you could offload leddy for signing a guy like graves or Severson in FA I think the back end would be top 10 in the league. Part of me also thinks Krug and leddy should be our only trades keep parayko bc he can’t be as bad as he’s played this year I think this summer he can turn around and be the guy we saw in cup run but his back issue is concerning

I'm not adverse to adding Chychrun. I am adverse to paying the amount that he should receive with his contract.

I think whether or not we're in a window yet, we need to explore all options to improve the defense. We have enough pieces up front that are very close. We don't have anything near that on the backend unfortunately.

If it were a different world and Chychrun were an RFA this season and would extend long term I personally would be very happy to move the two firsts we've acquired and a bit more to work out that long term contract with him. I just reserve my doubts that we're going to be any good for the next year or two regardless of what we do, especially if we trade Parayko and replace him with essentially Krug 2.0 in Barrie. This defense could possibly work (in the ACGM) if we had an unbelievably good offense. An offense you can almost gaurantee averages near 4 goals per game. The puck moving part could really throw the team into a fast paced transition team. However, if i'm doing that i'm looking elsewhere aside from Bunting Compher and Donato. And it's not gauranteed to work.

Personally, I just think moving Parayko is a pretty big mistake. We've been asking him to ascent to a 1D and putting him in the matchups to do so yet handcuffing him with terrible partners and giving him the full blame for it. He's not played fantastic this season, probably not to his standards either. But he is furthest from the issue on our blue line.

They would have the depth of a top 10 defense, maybe, but depth isn't their issue. Their issue is they don't have a #1 defenseman. Chychrun isn't one. I'm skeptical he's even a top pair guy on a true contending team. You need a top pair talent, and there just aren't any around at a reasonable age right now.

Faulk has exceeded every expectation that I had for him, but he's no more than a competent top 4 defenseman. Same goes for Parayko- I think you put him with a competent defense partner and he'd probably be steady. He's just been stuck with Scandella, Mikkola, and Leddy as his primary partners for the last three years, and he's playing too many minutes. So if you need to keep those guys around because you can't move them right this minute, then they're probably not going to hurt anything.

But to me you can't be seriously "rebuilding" around guys who are 30, especially guys who aren't elite players. Faulk and Parayko are not part of a core you rebuild around, just like the Devils didn't rebuild their core around Severson. They're all but pushing him out the door. So I guess I'm just confused about what the timeline here is, and I get that that's partially the Blues' fault, but like I don't think Severson or Graves really moves the needle here without a ton of other moves.

I don't think they should be trading for anyone except what's necessary to get out of these long contracts, or signing anybody long-term. The way to fix the defense is to take calculated swings at a reasonable cost for young defensemen on the outs while working the draft and free agency to acquire a #1 talent. You don't go out and sign Graves when he's 28 after he plays well in New Jersey, you go get Graves while he's 25 and a bottom 4 defenseman on Colorado you can get for a spare second round pick. They need to be looking past the name brand guys and getting guys who might bust but also might still be contributors in 2025 when the team is maybe back on the right track.

I mean yeah you're saying the same thing I'm saying about Chychrun. If this was a Timo Meier-esque situation and you can trade for a top pairing defenseman and lock him in for 8 years at age 24 then like maybe the acquisition cost makes sense. But Chychrun isn't a guy that's anchoring your defense on a contending team, like Meier anchors your top line. He's a good top 4 defenseman that will be a decent part of it. This is a hard cap league. The teams that are looking to acquire him are paying for the player on that contract. They're not paying for just the player. The reason he costs so much is because of his contract. Teams that can't take advantage of that contract don't have any business acquiring a defenseman like that. And the Blues can't take advantage of that contract. So you can have the conversation, but to me this guy is basically Darnell Nurse making half as much as Darnell Nurse. No one is selling the farm for Darnell Nurse at half price.

As for your take on the offense...I mean I think that's what they tried to do the last couple years, bringing in guys like Krug, Faulk, Leddy and Perunovich. Go high octane offense and hope it holds. It worked for a year when a goalie stood on his head. And then it didn't work. I don't believe it's a sustainable pathway to contention. You need to be able to win multiple ways.

I think no matter what you do you need to build part of the defense through the draft, because there's just no way to get top pairing defensemen otherwise. But when you explore options for improving the defense, I don't think going after name brands like Chychrun is efficient. You need to go after guys who are undervalued by their organization, don't have a pathway onto their teams. Ville Heinola, Reilly Walsh, Erik Brannstrom, Kyle Masters. Colorado, New Jersey, Tampa have had tremendous success in doing this. (Toews, Girard, Cernak, Sieganthaler, Graves, Sergachev were all acquired after they were drafted and some before they were even full time NHL players).

Re: Parayko, yeah, he's not a top pairing defenseman, but I honestly think he's been our best defenseman this year. That thought is probably worth prison time to some Blues fans, but he's the only guy who is good in his own zone. I'm not totally opposed to moving him but I'm not ready to do addition by subtraction on him like a lot of people seem to be. He'd be the last of the term guys I'm worried about moving.

Yep, we're of the same mindset here.

Last thing I honestly want to do is pay to move guys out or just dump them just to hand out another equally as bad and misfit contract in the offseason. We certainly don't have the pieces currently to fix our situation internally. Would be great to either trade our late picks to take a stab at a Simashev or Reinbacher. It's just hard to figure where defensemen in this draft are going to be taken.

Yeah it's tough. I'm really really high on Reinbacher as far as defensemen this year go, but I think the consensus is that he's a long shot to become a top pair guy and he's not one of the ten best guys this year...and yet will probably go top 10 anyway, as the hype has started to build and there's a void of defensemen. It's tough to draft for need, but they've just got so many forward prospects that while I'm a firm believer in take the best guy available, if the Blues are drafting 6 or 7 it's hard to look at a Zach Benson or an Oliver Moore that will surely make an impact when you have a guy that's a bit more of a long shot at a position of need right there. Same applies to Simashev, Sandin-Pelikka too.

Scandella deal doesn't really work for Columbus. Pass.