Edited Apr. 23 at 1:27 p.m.
Quoting: NucksnOilers
Eh looking back on things like this has never made sense to me.
Walman, Barbashev, Joshua and Dunn never become those players if they stayed in St.Louis, it just wasn't a fit for them and that's ok. You could do this for every single team in the league, no point in dreading over it
Usually I agree these exercises can turn into nonsense, and I do agree when it comes to the forwards. However:
Dunn, Walman and I would argue Mikkola all leveled up after leaving St. Louis. You could make an argument that they all had similar opportunities here that they eventually had in Florida, Detroit and Seattle. Dunn was on the championship roster. They tried Mikkola and Walman a bunch of times in the top six before finally trading for Leddy. They COULD have become that here.
It's easy to turn around and blame the players or the circumstances in that case, but if you let go of three defensemen that all play three very different styles, and they all go on to be better/more relied upon players on three different teams, and the common refrain is "well they never could have become that here" (where "here" is a team that's been weak on defense since 2020), that's not on the players at that point. You have a development issue somewhere.
The Blues have not developed a defenseman they felt comfortable consistently playing in their top 4 since Colton Parayko, and this exercise shows us it's not because they haven't had them.
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