I know many hate the "woulda, coulda, shoulda" posts but honestly there's a lot to be said about Armstrong just making some bad decisions that have really hampered the Blues when the right move to make was staring him in the face.

Agreed, it's sad that really all he had to do was nothing and this team would've been great. Instead he panicked and forced moves that just didn't make sense.

BluesReport18. Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. Nicely written....full of logic...which isn't always presented in these "What could've been"

This is the pain of trying to remain competitive long-term.

1. Walman, Dunn, Fabbri - Jake Walman could barely crack the lineup for us. At the time of the trade we had desperately needed a LD that could play with Parayko post Jbo (Which we still do). Walman could not do that at that time. Dunn was not trusted by the coaching staff hardly at all. He was stuck on the 3rd pair because he was unreliable in the defensive zone (which is comical because now 4 of our defenseman fit that mold). There wasn't really much they could do in that front to avoid Seattle taking him in the Expansion draft. Fabbri was traded as a favor to the player. He needed an opportunity to play and we needed to continue winning.

The biggest blunder armstrong had was Pietrangelo and always will be Pietrangelo. You could even say it started when they traded for Faulk. Just the sequence of moves doesn't make alot of sense to go from Pietrangelo to Faulk and Krug and expect good results.

Haven't seen a "Bruins 2015 draft redo" post in awhile... 🤣

Yeah I agree I think everything started when contract negotiations fell through with Pietrangelo. That led to the Faulk trade and all of these other poor defensive moves happening. Looking back, I was a huge fan of all 3 of Walman, Dunn, and Fabbri. To me, Walman has always been the same player, it wouldn't have mattered if he was 22 or 27 he was pretty much ready for an NHL role but then got passed over for Dunn, who had a higher ceiling. They are different dmen though and I remember for a few games that they played together, Walman and Parayko looked great. The Blues expect perfection from their young defenders but have no accountability for their veteran defenders. That should really be flipped, you should put your young defenders with a veteran defender expecting the young guy to make mistakes and the vet to cover for him, the Blues want the opposite.

With Dunn, that was just a blunder. The blues hated his style of holding the blue line defensively. It worked 95% of the time, but the 5% of the time it didn't work, it led to a breakaway. The Blues couldn't handle this and yet on Seattle Dunn does the same thing and is still excellent at doing it. The only difference is Seattle encourages him to do it and they have Larsson there for the 5% of times that Dunn gets burned.

You're probably right about Fabbri, but I'll never understand why they didn't get more for him. At the end of the day it's a business, if Army couldn't get more for Fabbri, he should've tried harder to make it work in St. Louis. A lot of times Army is just being nice to the player which hurts the team.

But somehow the Bruins keep on rolling along as top contenders in the East.

Just watch, they'll call up Zboril for the playoffs, he'll get in the lineup and turn into the stud dman they thought they got when they drafted him... 🙄

I'm not sure he could really ask anything for Fabbri. He was an absolute mess defensively. He didn't have the same jump he had pre-injury but tried to play like it. Always loved Fabbri as the player, but man that injury was brutal. He was getting scratched every other game here. That's one thing that's very admirable about Army. He will do everything in his power not to ruin a guy's career, even if it means taking a bit of hit in a trade.

Dunn was one of my favorite players while he was here and it stemmed back to his fight in the minors down the tunnels. And yeah I'd agree it's a philosophical thing for the team on why he didn't work out here. Although he was still pretty good here, he just wasn't what he is in Seattle.

Walman did get a bit of a runway you're right. But he didn't get much. I think we all just overlook how stabilizing Bouwmeester is and how unready Parayko was at that time to be the stabilizer on a pair.