The leafs need to get RID of cap. We don't need more...

I'm not the author of this AGM, but acquiring Blais at a cap hit of 500k does exactly that. Maybe not as much as you want but if he replaces any forward at or above league minimum, TOR saves at least 275k.

Until I see evidence of him reversing the negative trend in his play since Pietro left, I wouldn't pay 2 1sts to upgrade from Ceci to Parayko, even with the retention.

I'm in on Parayko, but the deal probably needs to swap Bourgault for Foegle to make it work.
Honestly though, I don't know anything about gaudette. What kind of player is he?

HARD pass on all of that.

He’s depth.

Blues can’t trade Parayko. There’s reason for other fanbases to be weary of acquiring him I get it. But he’s the sole reason that Justin Faulk puts up good numbers and we’re “somewhat” able to run two offensive pairings.

He ranks 9th for EV TOI at 20:38 per game. Only ahead of him are the following (Ek65, Chabot, Dahlin,Josi, Doughty, Power, Larsson). There are roughly 14 defenseman that logged around 20 minutes ES per game of those here are their even strength zone start %s in descending order.

Karlsson 64.7%
Dunn 61.8
Heiskenan 61
Larsson 60.1
Josi 59.8
Toews 57.3
Morrissey 56.7
Power 55.8
Dahlin 55.5
Letang 55.2
Hughes 53.1
Doughty 50.4
Chabot 48.7
Parayko 37.7

So what you have is a guy playing top 10 minutes in the league, and being relied upon 2/3rds of the time to start his shift in the defensive zone on a team that has 2 responsibly defensive forwards (this is with counting ROR). You also have a goalie that is pretty inconsistent, although last year contrary to numbers he wasn’t really that bad.

What does all of this mean? He is virtually set up to fail. Pair this with his partners for the past 2 seasons have primarily been Niko Mikkola, Marco Scandella and Nick Leddy. That means you are also putting those caliber of players in the same usage 90% of the time. The first two are essentially depth defensive defenseman who move the puck like it’s 2 seconds away from exploding. And the latter doesn’t have strengths that are warranting that type of usage.

It’s a bad formula in general. Parayko certainly hasn’t ascended as many of us had hoped. But he’s far from regressed. He hasn’t built on his weaknesses like we had hoped (shot accuracy, first pass, general playmaking from the point) but he still has his strengths (elite skating, massive frame, heavy heavy shot) and he’s still essentially a gaurantee for 30 points a season in monumentally bad usage.

Blues trade Parayko the whole backend crumbles even harder. Out of this I just hope it’s a little clearer why Blues fans and I’m assuming the front office would want the moon for this player even though his player card found online made by an independent model is doesn’t outline why his “performance” doesn’t show well.

Also, yes the term is scary it is for almost anyone that sings a contract from age 28-30. But with the cap rising and him essentially being paid #2 money now. When the contract starts to become bad (probably with 2 years left on it) the % of the cap should reflect payment of what a #4 receives. Which is completely stomachable considering what you’re getting for the first 5 years.

I’d very much doubt blues do this trade as is anyway

Then it wouldn’t work for the blues and honestly I can’t see it working now

Totally fair. AC14 outlined pretty clear reasoning for why, too.

Everything from his stlye of play, the role he plays, the Dmen he plays with, and the outside perception of him reads a lot like how EDM fans view Nurse. The guy has been putting in difficult & big minutes alongside non-optimal partners for 3 years now just like Parayko. The key difference is that Nurse's 5-on-5 relative goal share numbers didn't crater in that time like Parayko's have. It's very likely both's numbers would improve if their partner was the other, but it's just difficult to assess what that'll translate to in on-ice success and, therefore, how much it's worth in trade.

If we operate under the (likely false) premise that STL would be open to trading Parayko with 1.5mil retained, what kind of package would you look for in return (whether from EDM or another team)?

Edmonton doesn't have the cap for Parayko. Even if they did, Parayko's numbers do not inspire a lot of confidence for that money.

Yup exactly he’s very good but one of those guys that doesn’t show it on the scoresheet nessairly

It’s because he’s first 2 seasons he was so good offensively people think that’s the type of player he can be but he just isn’t