Geez that defense is pretty old.

Sure they're old but at least they're all mediocre and have trade protection for the next half decade.

You think Army is not going to make any trade or sign any player outside the team all summer?

I didn’t want to do anything yet I kind of wanted suggestions on what other people think

Ahh. My big idea is to move Krug or Leddy with minimum pain and then steal Byram from Colorado with a 5x6.3 offer sheet (though I am a bit concerned with his injury frequency to date).

My plan would involve shedding a D contract, preferably Krug, and trying to find someone internally or from outside who is younger but can handle 20 min per night. Maybe someone like a Vince Dunn or a Jake Walman (kill me). If there are good offers for Parayko in the offseason when teams have more cap flexibility I think you have to entertain them; he can help someone win now and the package we get can help us in 2-3 yrs. I think we should reinforce this concept that the rebuild doesn't need to be instant, it needs to be cohesive. Either be really good or really bad, don't hit the middle ground.

I'd also be watching Alexandrov and give him some more opportunity to see if he can be a capable 3C next season because that would be an area for an acquisition if he (or Brown, who is nearly hopeless at this point) doesn't show enough offense. But the key to this offseason will be avoiding any bad spending, I'd much rather see the Blues find some more bargains than try to fix the team with big spending in free agency. With 3 1sts in this draft and Snuggerud and Bolduc probably at least a full year away from reaching the show, I would love to see a "building" year in '23-24.

Thomas, Kyrou, and Snuggerud would be my untouchables. Anyone else is fair game for the right offer, which includes Buchnevich begrudgingly. I wish we could make him part of the core but he'll be 30 when it's time to sign his next contract, and he could fetch a return that could really accelerate the rebuild.

Like I said, we need to move an LD and then go offer sheet Byram. Dunn would be good, too, I just don't think that's realistic.

My only concern, other than Byram's injury history which I'm sure could be overcome, is that if you offer sheet someone at that price point you had better be sure that the team is fully built and ready to win because it has to be the Blues 1st rd pick and you can't put protection on it. I'm not sure the team is ready for that move yet tbh.

I don;t agree. Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong this season, and when a team is competitive 95% of the time and then they have one of those years, I kinda like their chances to resume normal service with a season reset. Usually this franchise picks upits socks midseason, but that just wasn;t happening this time. There's going to be a lot of players who play better than they did this season. Switching Byram (or Orlov or any of a number of LDs) in for Krug or Leddy, and this is a playoff team again.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. I agree that this season shouldn't be used to judge individual performances - as a whole the team is just broken. But they've made it hard to project wins because statistically they overperformed in '21-22 and then crashed and burned this year. I guess if Vrana and Kapanen can be 20 goal guys, if Schenn, Faulk, etc bounce back, and if they find someone to pair with Parayko to make a capable top pair there is a chance for playoffs. Based on the history I'm definitely more interested in the longer term than Stillman and co. so we'll probably see them make a push sooner than later.

I do not for one second agree with this "statistically overperformed" BS the Athletic loves to spout ("shooting well is luck!" = such total nonsense). Those fools don;t even watch games, and their entire methodology is full of more holes than Emmentaler right down to its statistical core. The Blues almost always shoot a high percentage because they have a lot of good shooters and play for high percentage chances. This will be the fourth season in a row the Blues shoot above 10% and finish top 10 in the league in shooting percentage. Heck, they had some dire finishing through the first 30 or so games of the season, and they're still up to 10.6% today, which is 7th in the NHL. They were outstanding last season because they were outstanding last season.