He literally had a quote once where he was like "I've never had a NTC affect my ability to make a trade" and that certainly felt not true at the time but is absolutely not true now

He’s not really an overly physical player where you worry about his body not being able to keep up down the line. The cap is rising again and honestly he’s already approaching AAv the cap norm for a 2nd pairing guy. Again I don’t see much of a problem with the term. His skating is still very strong, but it’ll probably be a problem if it completely goes. He’ll still have a good stick at that point.

In terms of bottoming out. I’m not sure that’s something the front office wants to do. And probably rightfully so. You could have all the talent in the world and still not be able to win. Cultures a real thing in professional sports. However, i think they seriously need to look in the mirror and see if that 3-5 year time frame is realistic.

Gunnarsson out of Lindstein would be fine, a solid if unremarkable NHL player is about what you should be hoping to get out of a late first round pick.

That said I do wish they would take some bigger swings. Lindstein is almost certainly going to play NHL games, but I would have been interested in some more boom-or-bust guys that the Blues seem to be allergic to picking.

I don't think we're going to be seeing him until after the TDL as long as the Blues are still halfway competitive. They'll trade Kapanen and Vrana and then maybe Bolduc and Snuggerud will get their games.

And why should we? Last five games aside he has not exactly been earth shattering in the AHL. QMJHL guys usually need at least one year to figure out how to play a men's hockey game. No reason to rush him onto the big club. I think getting a longer sample size on him having a high level of play is best for his development, especially after his slow start.

We certainly have a type in the first round. And realistically if we were constructed differently I think it’s a fine strategy. I think Bolduc is really the only one where we steered off the path recently.

High floor guys are good, you’re banking that you aren’t wasting any picks. But you also are making it tough to add a high end talent. Which is rarely available in other avenues

I mean this is a problem that stems from the Blues inability to pick a direction and these self imposed rules that Armstrong/Blues ownership is insistent on. If they're going to be bad they should trade Parayko (and Faulk, and Buchnevich, and Binnington, and probably every other good player over 27). If they're going to be good they need to be clearing out their guys that aren't producing and using their TDL haul to improve the team. They did neither, and so now they're like a team that's mostly making hay on Binnington playing well and Jake Neighbours shooting 28%. Might make the playoffs (which, honestly, is probably all they care about for that sweet sweet home game playoff revenue) but you're just banking on Cinderella runs that more often than not fall short anyway, not building a real contender.

And I get that Armstrong checked in on Timo Meier and tried to ship Krug out with one of the 1sts (not convinced that the latter would have necessarily been a good move and also Timo Meier has been terrible this year) but at the end of the day he didn't pull either of those or anything else of note off so...stuck in the middle it is.


Sorry for staking up comments here I came like twenty minutes late to the party.

Exactly, they're the kind of moves you make when you need to supplement a roster already anchored by top end guys, which most contenders already have. And while I like Thomas and Kyrou and Buchnevich a lot, I don't know that the Blues have that kind of roster anymore.

What is frustrating to me is when Army says he wants to replicate the LA rebuild. Except:
1 - their fading/aging talents (Kopitar, Doughty) are a lot better players than ours (Schenn, Parayko). It's a lesser gamble to count on the mid-30s of elite players.
2 - their draft picks were 5oa, 2oa (4oa before lotto), 8oa when they bottomed out. Does Army think 10oa-25oa-29oa last year was good enough to start the turnaround? If not, why did he build a team to try to get 85-90 pts?
3 - they found Fiala just like we found Buch, but we got Buch too early in the timeline and his impact on the future, rebuilt team is in limbo. Fiala's entire prime will be spent with the rebuilt team.

I think you’re taking it a bit too literally. But yes, it’s going to be extremely hard to replicate. I think what Army was getting at was moreso having a short term turnaround 3-4 years versus 7-8. The odd thing about the Kings is yes they did bottom out. But I don’t think you can look at the players they bottomed out and got and say they’re the reason things turned around for LAK.

I’m interested to see what their contract structure looked like

My take: Regardless of how short you want a rebuild to be, you need to add cornerstone pieces from the top of the draft. I don't think the long rebuilds are ever on purpose. No GM is ever saying "we're gonna tear it all down and maybe in 8-10 yrs we'll have a good team again". Maybe they can't find the culture shift back to winning, but the way I see it, 'winning culture' doesn't matter in this league until you've got top talent at the key positions. And other than some pure luck/randomness the only way to get it is at the top of the draft. 15 of 17 championship teams of the cap era (oh the irony that one of them is the Blues built by DA) has had a player they drafted 1 or 2 overall. So if you're gonna rebuild, don't take half measures and think it will make it go quicker.

You need to have elite talent from somewhere. The best place to find it- and keep it- is at the top of the draft, but we saw from Vegas that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way (sure, Marchessault was an expansion piece, but do they get to where they wanted to go without adding Stone/Eichel/Pietrangelo? Probably not).

But the Blues haven't even really done that as far as acquiring elite talent. They haven't drafted higher than 10 in 15 years. They've found some pretty good players in the rough (Kyrou, Parayko) but they're no Mark Stone or Jason Roberston. They pulled off the O'Reilly trade which, I mean, who can deny the impact, but they've let more of those guys go than kept them. Couldn't connect on Tkachuk. Couldn't connect on Eichel. Couldn't make a pitch for Dougie Hamilton and ultimately couldn't sell their own top end defenseman on staying in St. Louis. The hemorrhaging of elite talent while commiting to good-but-not-great players like Binnington, Schenn, even Krug and Leddy is- to me- what prematurely closed the window.

I think the Blues in particular need to find it at the top of the draft given where their team is (lot of old guys, not a big young core). But if they won't tank, they're going to have to get more creative on finding guys late in the draft or guys that other teams are undervaluing. Dallas isn't a perfect example (given that they drafted Heiskanen #3), but they pulled Robertson out of thin air. Hintz and Stankoven were also second round picks. They drafted Johnston, Oettinger and Harley late-ish in the first round. They went out and got Lundkvist. Not trying to bash guys that aren't even fully developed but I'm not sure that Theo Lindstein and Zach Dean are going to measure up in that way, even if they end up being fine players.

The Kings were just good about acquiring the right guys at the right time (mostly). They went out and got Fiala, and Gavrikov, and Danault and that set them up to be a team that had strong depth. They had drafted well previously too (Kempe, Roy). But they were also very fortunate that Doughty and Kopitar didn't bite the dust in their early thirties.

I'm not sold on the Kings as true cup contenders but they seem to be clicking at a higher level than the past 2-3 years and I do have to say I think you can attribute a lot of that to Byfield having been really really good this year.

So i did a little bit of brief digging because i was moreso interested in how the Kings exactly went about things because the draft picks the higher ones really have not been a huge factor thus far.

2017-2018 45-29-8 (98 points)
Notable Salaries:
Doughty 11m Thru 25-26 Still Active
Kopitar 10m thru 23-24 Still Active
Quick 5.8m thru 22-23 Traded last deadline
Brown 5.875 thru 21-22 Ran through Expiry
Kovalchuk 6.25 thru 20-21 (Contract Terminated 2019)
Martinez 4m thru 20-21 (Traded 2020 (2 2nd round picks))
Carter 5.275 thru 21-22 (Traded 2021 50% retained on expiring deal for 3rd + 4th)

After this season is when their collapse started equivalent to last season for us. They had made a few small additions in the offseason but nothing big.

2018-2019 31-42-9 (71 points)
extended Walker 2.65 thru 23-24
Maata 3.33 thru 21-22
Kempe 2m x 2
Iafollo 2.425 one year

The following 2 seasons they did largely nothing

2019-2020 29-35-6 (64 points)
No significant adds very similar

2020-2021 (49 points) COVID Year 6th in div
No significant adds very similar

Then this is where they started to be aggressive as there was very limited time on Brown, Maata expiring. Quick couple years left.
2021-2022 (99 points)
Added Danault
Added Arvidsson
added Edler
extended Roy
added Athanasiou
Trevor Moore Bridge
Stetcher minimal contract

Then the next year they added Fiala and that's pretty current to where they stand. Now there was certainly youth that came in to play in this but it wasn't very significant.

Vilardi 54 games 24 points 2020-21, missed most of 21-22, good season last season then traded in PLD trade.
Kalyiev had a pretty minimal contribution in 21-22, .5ppg last season in limited action, this season looks like he's taking another stride.
Byfield hasn't really jumped until this season. Last season wasn't bad.

What can we learn from this?

LAK realized it pretty quickly and started selling - Armstrong did the same this past season with ROR/Barby/Tarasenko

They then went into a holding pattern to let some of the other contracts run out (Brown, Kovalchuk (got lucky here), Carter, Martinez (debatable if it needed to run out wasn't awful), Quick, Kopitar, Doughty). The last two aren't really part of a problem really, just moreso they are running towards the end of their careers so included them.

What do the Blues have in that front that need to run out?
Saad - 3 more at 4.5m
Hayes - 3 more at 3.6m
Schenn - 5 more at 6.5m
Krug - 4 more at 6.5m
Faulk- 4 more at 6.5m
Leddy- 3 more at 4m
Parayko - 7 more at 6.5m
Scandella - Expiring this season not integral.

You can categorize Parayko, and probably Schenn in that moreso Kopitar and Doughty scenario. But they aren't those two. So there's one hurdle to climb. But what is good (Or bad however you view it) is that we essentially already have our Fiala in Kyrou, I would take Thomas' contribution over PLDs as well.

So while we can probably comp to the pieces that LA had we have alot larger of a hill to climb. Meaning I don't really see too well how we are going to start that uptick in year 4 of the retool without additional work (Moving Faulk/Krug). But what is good is the youth injection that we will probably miss out on isn't what turned things around for LA. However, it's highly likely it's going to be what pushes them upwards even more. So do we Need to bottom out? No not necessarily. LA rebounded with mainly young guys who weren't high end talents jumping up and their roles expanding. What worries me is how we're going to navigate adding in supplemental guys - Arvidsson/Iafollo/Danault/ to help push us over the edge if we dont

Nice work! I'm sure that took a long time lol.

Yeah like I said I'm not totally sold on the Kings as like true cup contenders a big reason for that is a lot of their guys are really good but not great. To their credit, they do have a LOT of those really good guys, more than most teams. Kempe/Fiala/Danault/Roy/Gavrikov, even Dubois (maybe at a reduced price)- these are important guys that you have at the top of your lineup. But, I'm not sure they are the ones that are really making it happen in the playoffs. Kopitar/Doughty- still very very good but I'm not sure if they're still at that gamebreaking level. And then the young guys might just be a little too green.

I guess I'm also not looking at the Kings as a roster that's been "successfully" rebuilt. Like they're good this year and they've been decent the last couple of years. But since they won the cup in 2014 this is how it's gone:

14-15 missed playoffs
15-16 lost in first round
16-17 missed playoffs
17-18 lost in first round
18-19 missed playoffs
19-20 missed playoffs
20-21 missed playoffs
21-22 lost in first round
22-23 lost in first round

Maybe you cut them some slack for running into the Oilers twice and obviously there's still a wide range of possibilities for their future but I guess I'm not looking at this rebuild, with a lot of depth, a lot of big names but not a lot of game breaking talent anymore, and being like "woah the Kings!". They've done some good work here and there but they wasted a lot of prime years of Kopitar and Doughty without much direction after the 2nd cup win, then they rebuilt (which was necessary) and by necessity, had to burn more prime years, and now they're good but like I said I don't know that they have what it takes to get past some of the bigger guns in the conference.

So if Armstrong wants to emulate the Kings, I kind of would hope he would aim higher and be more aggressive (in one way or another).

I took a few things away from this. I think the Kings do still have the culture of winning. Heck Doughty, Kopitar and Quick were some of the faces of those runs they went on. I think this is what pushes them over the edge currently to having them have been extremely successful the past two seasons. I think it's a model that's extremely similar to the Blues model. The outcome is the process of the whole type of situation.

I do agree with you though, I don't really consider them a true top end team. They aren't a Tampa, and barring Byfield ascending to being a true 1C with high end output and Clarke doing the same I don't think they'll get there. But what they do have is an extremely good base that should keep them successful and give them a chance for the next 5, probably 10 years.

I also don't really think the Pacific has been all that great anytime in the recent past. Alot of teams with alot of true issues.

But the good news for them is they have an environment for guys like Byfield and Brandt to be brought into good positions and be the alpha dogs there in the next 2-3 years while winning and doing so. I don't mind Armstrong shooting for this. But I also am not sure it's feasible to avoid the longterm turnaround. One way or another we're going to have to age out the Krug contract, ESPECIALLY if Doug isn't going to play hardball on the NTC.

I'm in a boat that has a pretty large appreciation for Armstrong as the GM and President of Hockey Ops. I think he's very concealed, but also very open and honest about his direction. Has he had some mistakes? For sure. I don't think anyone is going to know what exactly went down with the whole Pietrangelo situation. But that was a major root into the downfall of the roster. Not necessarily just because of the loss of Pietrangelo, but also because of the moves that seemed to be made out of urgency to try and fill the gap.

People keep saying this, and it's entirely irrelevant. Nobody expects a Cup contender, but he's costing them points- that's the measure. He's not getting what he can out of the group thanks to bad lineup choices, matchups and pairings.

Just as one of many examples, Colt keeps getting stuck out against top lines with our 3rd or 4th line forwards. Why? Who the hell knows. And then everyone wonders why Parayko's xG share is so low. Well, that's because the forwards can't move the puck or keep it in the other zone, so we end up stuck in our zone the whole time.... and then everyone bashed the defense when it's not even their fault a little bit.

It's a problem.

We should have grabbed Gavrikov 10000000%. Perfect Colt partner. I screamed this from the rooftops for months on end.

Yeah I’ve found myself annoyed more than a few times. Parayko also has to backpack leddy who has been awful

Could be, hard sell to trade a first for a rental without an extension if you're not making the playoffs though

Obviously, I'd insist on the extension.

Leddy has played shockingly decent much of the season. He has been decidedly less decent in several of the last 10-ish games.

Well the Byfield/Brandt thing, that's more or less what the Blues did with Thomas and Kyrou right? The team was good when those guys were coming up after being mediocre-ish when they were drafted. The Blues just couldn't maintain the momentum. Maybe you can blame some of it on the flat cap but you talk about Pietrangelo leaving- like to me that was just the worst offender of a problem the Blues had for awhile, which is that they seemed to stop understanding what made defensemen valuable, and generally acted very reactively.

- You extend Faulk into his mid thirties when he had never played a game while you're trying to re-sign your captain
- Bouwmeester goes down permanently and your only LHD is Vince Dunn so you panic and extend Scandella in his mid thirties based on 10 games while still trying to re-sign your captain
- Pietrangelo leaves so you panic and extend Krug (never mind that Devon Toews was traded three days later)
- Extend Parayko coming off a back injury until he's 37 because you can't fathom another Pietrangelo situation
- Scandella can't hack top four minutes (who would have thought?) so you panic trade for Leddy (giving away a future top pairing defenseman in the process)

Some of these guys are big. Some of them are small. Some of them are offensive. Some of them not so much. Some of them are puck movers, some not. They're all over the place except for one thing- they're old, and they're as expensive as they'll ever be. And in the meantime they hemorrhage younger guys who would go on to play top pairing minutes on other teams, and look pretty good doing it.

I don't mean to relitigate all this but when it comes to Armstrong- I think he's a decent GM, can't deny the ring, but I do think all GMs have a shelf life, and that timeline of mismanagement on the blue line is pretty damming. And frankly, I like Travis Sanheim but that's another guy signed into oblivion Armstrong supposedly tried to trade for. Not exactly indicative of someone learning their lesson to me. He can be a good GM but also, idk, for me maybe it's time.

Well, that's not exactly up to you though right? He didn't even extend with the Kings until after the season was over and they were a playoff team. And they didn't get him for that long.

I get the feeling the not extending right away was more on the Kings than him. Either way, I meant I'd insist on to make the trade. If he wouldn't extend, I'd probably walk away.

I think the most damning things he’s done is to sign Scandella and Leddy to rather large contracts for what they are after very small sample sizes.

I look at the Sanheim thing as really can be looked at either way. Once it gets to the point of those guys not being top 4s or both being 3rd pair guys. You can live with the cap hit. I’d imagine they’ve explored options to move on from most of the defenseman and probably couldn’t find much. I wouldn’t be opposed to having Parayko and Sanheim locked up reasonably and filling the holes as you go