Blues general manager Doug Armstrong doesn’t want his team to end up like the poor Chicago Blackhawks.
After their dynastic Stanley Cup run, the Blackhawks got old and fell into disrepair. They took one last stab at contending last season and failed miserably.
Now that once-proud franchise is starting over from scratch, initiating a complete rebuild that will subject their fans to years and years of horrendous hockey.
Armstrong is determined to avoid such a fate for fans in the STL.
So he's constantly mulling tough decisions. He must deal with his salary cap crunch for 2022-23, of course, but he must continue to work future puzzles too knowing that the salary cap may not budge much.
The Blues can’t keep everybody year after year. They can only hope to keep the right mix of players while continuing to make the numbers work.
That’s why goaltender Ville Husso is a Detroit Red Wing now, after saving the Blues last season. That’s why winger David Perron didn’t receive a market-value offer from the Blues as his unrestricted free agency neared.
Armstrong loves Perron as a player, and why not? David is the rare NHLer who got better with age. He became a force with the man-advantage by developing a wicked one-time shot.
He has been a clutch player, a winner and a great team guy who is a vital part of the Blues’ winning chemistry. He shines with the media and he is an excellent salesman for the sport.
But ...
Perron is 34 years old. He has an extensive injury history, including career-threatening concussions. The Blues have 10 other players 29 and older who are likely to return, so this team is getting some age on it.
Rookie forwards Jake Neighbours and Zachary Bolduc should infuse more youth into the front lines during the next few years and balance the budget with their entry-level contracts.
Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko are big-ticket players heading into their final contract year and Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas are emerging stars heading toward bigger dollars. Future salary cap challenges loom.
So Armstrong held the line on his offer to Perron, just as he held the line on the dollars offered Alex Pietrangelo and Jaden Schwartz and the term offered David Backes when they approached free agency.
Perron could have given Armstrong a hometown discount with his contract demands. But he already gave the franchise a great deal with his last contract while outperforming his $4 million cap hit. He is a proud guy and his agent, Allan Walsh, is one of the best in the game.
The STL has been great to Perron. He has enjoyed his time here. His family settled in nicely. But things aren’t so wonderful that he would accept millions less over the course of his next contract to stay.
So he seemed poised to join an impressive list of established stars in the unrestricted marketplace place Wednesday. Destined Hall of Famers Evgeni Malkin and Claude Giroux are expected to be on that list — and 115-point scorer Johnny Gaudreau too.
Will Armstrong really leave the door open for Perron once David assesses his value? Will he pivot quickly and sign somebody else, as he did when adding Torey Krug to replace Pietrangelo?
Will he set that salary cap space aside for a while to see if some sequence of events could bring him a Top Four defenseman or perhaps even Our Town’s Matthew Tkachuk?
We’ll see. With Armstrong, you never say never. He has made ridiculously good trades for Ryan O’Reilly, Brayden Schenn, Justin Faulk and Pavel Buchnevich to keep the Blues in the playoff chase in recent years
Armstrong knows he has at least one more season to contend with this really good team. Perhaps he will find ways to keep the competitive window open a while longer.
But as much as Armstrong would like to go “all in” every year, he knows that it’s just not possible to do so in the NHL’s salary cap world.
The Blues will inevitably face a reset — as the surviving veterans of the Cup-winning team get deeper into their 30s — but they can’t let things get ugly in this market.
Ugly hockey doesn’t sell and the Blues must maintain a brisk business to remain viable. So they must keep freshening up the nucleus with younger (and less expensive) players without letting the talent level plunge.
When teams collect too many onerous contracts and waste too many long-term assets by trading for short-term gains, they risk ending up like the Blackhawks.
That team waved the white flag this summer by trading away 24-year-old star Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach, the third overall pick in 2019. It cast off restricted free agents Dylan Strome and Dominik Kubalik by declining to make them a qualifying offer.
Blackhawks star Patrick Kane is not happy, so expect him to be shopped. The same goes for Captain Serious, Jonathan Toews. The Blackhawks want more draft picks, more prospects and better odds of winning the 2023 NHL Draft lottery.
Meanwhile the Blues will take another run at the playoffs. Sustaining that pace is not easy, but Armstrong keeps making the tough decisions needed to keep the team up to speed.
