ZedVlog

If you wanted a clue as to how active Blues general manager Doug Armstrong would be in free agency, all you had to do was glance into his glass office at Centene Community Ice Center on Saturday. He wasn’t fielding phone calls and exchanging contract offers with agents. He was sitting peacefully in a chair, watching over the team’s prospect camp.

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We really didn’t need that clue, though, did we? Armstrong showed his cards after he plucked Pittsburgh forward Kasperi Kapanen off waivers and traded for Detroit forward Jakub Vrana last season. He told us at the trade deadline on March 3: “I don’t feel comfortable that this is the summer to get out in the free-agent market. Where we are with the growth of our team, if we don’t have to, I don’t want to be giving out three- and four-year deals to players this summer.”

With a hole at center and some salary-cap space left, there was a chance the Blues could get involved, but last week’s trade for Philadelphia center Kevin Hayes ended that. The move gave them 21 players under contract for next season — 22 when restricted free agent Alexey Toropchenko is signed — and put them within $2.5 million of the NHL’s $83.5 million cap ceiling for 2023-24.

The Blues did add free-agent Mackenzie MacEachern on Saturday, bringing back the 29-year-old forward on a two-year, one-way contract ($775,000 average annual value). A third-round pick by the team in 2012, MacEachern played four seasons in St. Louis before signing with Carolina as a free agent last season. He spent the bulk of 2022-23 with the Hurricanes’ AHL affiliate, where he had 11 goals and 30 points in 37 games, but now back on a one-way deal with the Blues, he’ll likely be in the NHL competing for a depth spot.

So barring a trade or two before opening night in October, which is distinctly possible, the Blues’ roster looks fairly well set. If you’re upset by that, Armstrong has been pretty clear that the club has entered a retool that could mean multiple years before it’s a Stanley Cup contender again. The Blues want to be as competitive as possible but keep the focus on the future.

“You can always get better,” Armstrong said. “A trade here or a trade there can change that make-up. (But) we’re excited about the young players coming into our team over the last 12 months. You start with (Joel) Hofer in goal. Jake Neighbours is going to play full-time. We expect Nikita Alexandrov to take a bigger role, Scott Perunovich to be healthy and take a role, and Tyler Tucker to take a role. When you add that many players, you do want to have some veteran players around to support those guys. But that’s where we’re at today.”

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And it’s why the Blues were not in the headlines Saturday: the young players are already in place, and Armstrong went bargain shopping for a few veterans in the past four months to go with vets who he hopes will be better than a year ago.

In essence, while the Blues got Hayes in a trade, he was their “free-agent addition.” They acquired the 6-foot-5, 216-pound center for a sixth-round draft pick, and Philadelphia agreed to retain 50 percent of the remaining three years left on his contract ($3,571,429 AAV).

“It’s sort of in the vein of getting Kapanen or Vrana — another NHL player who plays in our top nine,” Armstrong said. “The contract fits into our structure. The timeline fits into our structure. In the next few years, we see the strength of our young players being wingers right now, so (Hayes) doesn’t preclude anyone from getting into our group. So it just felt like a good player and all the circumstances came together.”

In the vein of Kapanen and Vrana is important here because now the Blues have three players who have been 40-point players in the league — 50-point players in the case of Vrana and Hayes — for a combined cap hit of approximately $9.4 million. Like the deal for Hayes, the Blues also got Vrana with the Red Wings retaining 50 percent of his salary, so instead of being hit with a combined cap hit of $12.4 million, it’s just $6.2 million between those two.

“I’ll go back to the trade deadline,” Armstrong said. “Teams are in positions where they have to move things out to get players in there. So like the Kapanen one, (the Penguins) were trying to do things and they had to open up space, so we grabbed him. The Vrana one was a special situation with Detroit, where they felt he needed a fresh start. So they just fall into different categories.

“It was well-documented just the reading tabloids on where Philadelphia stood with Hayes, so it was an easy conversation to have. ‘Where do you stand with him?’ Then it just becomes (a situation) like all things in today’s world — a math equation.”

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That math worked for the Blues.

It was announced this week that the NHL salary cap will increase by just $1 million next season, to $83.5 million. With Hayes and MacEachern, the Blues have $81.9 million committed to the cap, leaving them with $1.6 million in available space. That includes the NHL salary of forward Neighbours, who’s still playing on an entry-level deal and can be paid a minor-league salary if he’s reassigned. It does not include the salary of forward Toropchenko, who is a restricted free agent this summer and remains unsigned.

What’s interesting about the timing of the Blues’ retool and the need for players such as Hayes is that the cap is expected to jump significantly as soon as 2024-25, and teams may not be under as much pressure then to shed salary.

In Philadelphia, Hayes had clashed with coach John Tortorella, so perhaps a trade during any cap environment would’ve been necessary. Also, the Flyers are about $9 million under next season’s cap and may not be spending to the upper limit.

But generally speaking, Armstrong agreed that clubs may have less of an appetite for retaining as much salary when the cap increases more significantly.

“Yeah, this will be the last year we do this,” Armstrong said, speaking from a league perspective. “The cap is going to go up probably $5 million the next couple of years. So, this is the last year that the cap is going to be as constricted, and you’ll probably see less necessity to move players and retain salary as the years move forward.”

The other advantage for the Blues, as Armstrong has pointed out multiple times, is that the players he’s acquired should be motivated. Kapanen and Vrana are in the final years of their contracts, and at 26 and 27 years old, respectively, are at a prime point in their careers for another payday. Hayes has three years left, and he’s 31, but he has to have the desire to prove Philadelphia wrong.

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“Yeah, he does,” Armstrong said. “Things didn’t go well for the Flyers, in general, and for him, last year. I think going to a team that has players in his age group — Brayden Schenn, Justin Faulk, Colton Parayko, Nick Leddy, Torey Krug, Brandon Saad — that wants to win now, and I think having that type of player motivated is a good thing.”

Hayes was asked about that motivation.

“You never want to get traded out of any job you’re doing, whether it’s sports or a desk job. You feel like you’re letting someone down,” he said. “Now I can use that to go to St. Louis and show everyone that I can still play in this league at a high level. I mean, it wasn’t long ago (last year) that I was at the All-Star game.

“Those other guys (Kapanen and Vrana), they had different situations. But you could follow them when they went to St. Louis, and they were much better players than what they were given credit for. They’ve both been successful players in the NHL, and I feel like they’ve found their game again in St. Louis.”

So, if this is the roster the Blues take into next season, more or less, how could the lineup shake out? Doing this exercise in September is difficult, much less July — but what the heck.

I’ve got to admit, Armstrong provided a bit of a cheat sheet when he mentioned the left-wing depth chart recently and included Pavel Buchnevich, Vrana, Brandon Saad and Toropchenko.

So let’s start there and work around the rest.

I’m putting Buchnevich with Robert Thomas at center and Kyrou on the other wing. You could flip Buchnevich and Kyrou — left or right wing — whatever you prefer.

If Vrana is next, I would put him with Schenn and Kapanen. Vrana struggled a bit defensively last year, so this spot could be up for debate, but having him and Kapanen together does give you the speed element we saw last season.

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Then with Saad, you’ve got Hayes and either Sammy Blais or Neighbours. Blais deserves a shot given the way he finished last season and won gold with Team Canada at the recent World Championship, but he may make more sense on the fourth line than Neighbours.

Then you’ve Toropchenko, when he’s signed, with perhaps Nathan Walker in the middle and either Blais or Neighbours.

That’s 12 forwards, and Armstrong recently indicated that the Blues are likely to go with 13 to start the season. The options for the extra spot would include MacEachern, Alexandrov, Zach Dean and perhaps Zachary Bolduc. MacEachern seems like the logical candidate, being on a one-way deal and because Armstrong said recently that Hayes’ addition would allow a more natural progression for Alexandrov and Dean. Bolduc, who can be assigned to the AHL this season, would need a very impressive training camp to make the cut, and even so, it would be surprising to see him in a fourth-line role.

As far as the defense, Armstrong said the Blues could go with eight to open the season, which would presumably be the eight on one-way contracts: Colton Parayko, Nick Leddy, Justin Faulk, Torey Krug, Robert Bortuzzo, Marco Scandella, Tyler Tucker and Scott Perunovich.

Krug is here for now, following a report from The Athletic that the Blues were planning to include him in the trade with Philadelphia for Hayes until Krug invoked his no-trade clause. Asked about that and if he felt a need to speak with Krug and smooth over the situation, Armstrong twice replied: “I don’t respond to rumors.”

If indeed this is the group, you’d perhaps have a top four of Leddy-Parayko and Krug-Faulk. Then it gets tricky with four players for two spots, which I hemmed and hawed over. I eventually landed on Tucker and Bortuzzo because I believe they want Tucker in the lineup and they’ll want Bortuzzo’s penalty-killing ability on a unit that struggled mightily last season. But I also believe they want Perunovich to play, and Scandella can help on the PK, too. I could see Perunovich and Tucker playing together. And don’t forget about Calle Rosen, who might’ve been the Blues’ best defenseman last year.

“Our blue line has been a topic of discussion over the last year,” Armstrong said. “(But) it’s the same blue line that had 109 points (in 2021-2022), so I think really what we need to do is get our group back playing to that level. Craig (Berube) and I have talked about that with the new coaching staff, that we have to be harder as a group of five on the ice in our zone, and they have to get back to the level that they’ve played at in the past. That’s our focus now.”

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In goal, it’s shaping up to be Jordan Binnington and rookie Joel Hofer, who signed a two-year, one-way deal and will replace Thomas Greiss as the backup.

So for now, again in July, this is what I’ve got. How does it stack up against your expected lines and pairings? Let me know in the comments.

Buchnevich-Thomas-Kyrou
Vrana-Schenn-Kapanen
Saad-Hayes-Blais
Toropchenko-Walker-Neighbours

Leddy-Parayko
Krug-Faulk
Tucker-Bortuzzo

Binnington
Hofer

(Photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

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