ST. LOUIS — Ninety-one subliminally looms in The Lou.
As if to tease the Blues and Blues fans, Vladimir Tarasenko’s No. 91 pops up in this summer, be it as the temperature, the number of the Olive Metro bus route, new Cardinal Nolan Arenado’s birth year or, well, on 9/1, when the calendar flips to the month that signifies Blues camp starting.
Will No. 91 be on the ice?
Most people can’t believe he will be. How could he be? So much has happened, right? The accusations. The frustrations. The finger-pointing. (And who knows which finger!)
Even though the longtime Blues forward — heck, the legendary Blues forward (he’s fifth in goals scored) — has requested a trade, that doesn’t mean it’ll happen before camp. It might. It could. The Hurricanes? The Islanders? The Devils? The devil is in the details, though, as to which team makes the trade.
Or, more specifically, which team St. Louis trades him to.
It’s all about value. Vladimir’s value. The value of a haul. Weighing risk and reward.
If the Blues try to trade Tarasenko, the other team knows it isn’t getting “video-game Vladi,” the goal-scorer who famously graced the cover of EA Sports’ NHL 17. It’s getting a question mark in skates that could, possibly, form into an exclamation point.
Tarasenko, eight months younger than Arenado, was also born in ’91 — so No. 91 turns 30 in December. And he’s coming off his third shoulder surgery. Regardless of accusations about the success or failure of the previous surgeries, Tarasenko is still trying to return to top form, whatever 30-year-old Tarasenko top form is.
So if you’re to get him, what are you getting?
And we haven’t even mentioned the cap hit yet. That’s $7.5 million this season. And next season. Of course, in a trade, the Blues could take on some of that money, but it’s still quite a bit of cash for any player, let alone one in Tarasenko’s situation.
So again, it comes back to what that team would give up to get Tarasenko. We already saw the expansion team from Seattle pass on getting Tarasenko for, essentially, free. The Kraken decided not to take on Tarasenko’s contract and bypassed him in the expansion draft. Instead, it was fellow Cup-winner Vince Dunn who went from being a St. Louis Blue to wearing the Seattle “deep sea” blue (as it is, the Kraken actually has four official team colors — deep sea blue, ice blue, boundless blue and shadow blue).
By not selecting Tarasenko, that implied the Kraken front office also wouldn’t flip No. 91 to another team, which likely meant the offered haul wasn’t that enticing. Again, it all comes back to maximizing the value of every asset, every expansion pick, every everything. And that’s what the Blues have kept in mind this summer.
There are numerous moving parts to all of this, and it’s all under the umbrella of the salary cap, the same cap as the previous offseason, the cap that is affecting and altering how hockey deals are made in 2021. The Blues still have about $3.5 million of cap space, but the Blues still have to figure out Robert Thomas’ contract. Credit the Blues and chairman Tom Stillman for traditionally paying to the cap.
Trading Tarasenko would give them some financial flexibility, of course. But again, it comes back to this: Which team wants to take on that financial burden? Especially because they don’t know what they’re getting.
That is why keeping Tarasenko for the short-term actually makes some sense. The team’s general manager even suggested it as a possibility in a media Zoom in July. Yes, we know that Tarasenko and his agent have used the scorched-earth approach regarding the Blues. He’s not asking out of St. Louis just because he doesn’t “get” Imo’s. As Jim Thomas has reported in this newspaper, there is legitimate anger about how the Blues handled the previous surgeries. But the most important thing at this point is the return from the most recent surgery. He only got in 24 games at the end of last season, scoring four goals with 10 assists.
In the four-game series against Colorado, which the Avalanche swept, Tarasenko’s plus-minus ratings in the first three games were minus-two, minus-two and minus-three. In that fourth game, he came to life, showing signs of his previous life, as he netted two goals. And then he did play well in the World Championships for Russia.
So the Blues don’t have that much to lose by bringing him back to start this season. Let him play his way out of town. Let him prove he’s healthy, prove he can move, prove he can still snipe. And then his value would go up, he’d have more suitors and he could be traded away for a fresh start at 30 (or in the final month or two of 29).
Sure, it’ll be awkward. Super-awkward. Tarasenko in Blues camp? Having to answer media questions? Having to play with teammates he wanted to leave?
But the business of hockey is business. It’s a risky business. It’s a risk-reward business.
