Thomas wants at leats 2.8 on a bridge i hear maybe trade scandella?

Yeah that's a solid deal for the Blues. Gives us some much needed defensive depth and obviously Eichel is a huge prize. He'll be out to start the season but Schenn and O'Reilly can easily cover center duties until then. I know some Blues fans don't want the Blues to pursue Eichel but when healthy he's easily a top ten center in the league and he would prop the window of this team open by another few years.

Dunno if the Sabres would go for it though and Thomas will need more so there may need to be some more salary moved out somewhere. Roster's a little incomplete too. But good framework for a deal.

If they can replace Scandella sure, if Perunovich can step in that would be a crazy lineup

I would love it

Thomas is not signing that, and even if he did we're stunting his growth and the Blues would lose 2-3-4 players they don't want to lose next summer. Pass.

He's a middle 6 forward, hes right where he needs to be for growth. And they lose 34 year old Perron

Again, no thanks.

Realistically Thomas would probably be part of an Eichel trade. I'd take this alternative - elite center depth - any day. How often does a team have a chance to add a young star center at the top of the lineup? I know the Blues m.o. is balance and depth but they aren't good enough as is and schenn/ror/DP/parayko/krug aren't getting any younger. I'd def be ok with this deal, I'd be ok with the Blues giving up even more tbh.

Well, then that's where you and I differ. I am not interested in:

1- Throwing our salary structure out of whack, which can only come back to hurt us when others run out of contract or we chase a FA.
2- Throwing our team structure, which has carefully been crafted over years, out of whack.
3- Risking on a 10M player with a potentially problematic neck situation that doesn't seem to have an end in sight ATM.
4- Losing extra important players beyond what is paid out in the trade because we can;t afford them, and turning ourselves into Edmonton.
5- Blocking Thomas progress in every way (on ice role/future leadership role).
6- Blasting a huge hole in the prospect depth we're actually starting to build back up, which can only help our cap situation moving forward.

And last but not least:

7- Agreeing to a trade that hands a half-retained Tarasenko to the damn Avs FCOL.

Meanwhile, none of this works anyway because Thomas is not signing for that pittance. So now we'd piss him off and he'd hold out, and the next thing you know we're ditching him, too.

Sorry, I'm not going to get distracted by every shiny toy luxury item. If we're going to go get a crazy expensive piece, I'd rather it be one we actually need.

Your points are fine, there is logic to avoiding a 10m AAV when the money is as tight as it is. And I can't pretend to know the severity of JE's neck injury... it does sound scarier than most injuries.

But did you say something like this when we got ROR? We already had schenn and thomas and a newly-added bozak to center the top 3 lines... why on earth would they give up the balance in their lineup and good future pieces for something they don't need?

My philosophy is start with the best players and figure the rest out. Eichel would be the best player to wear the Note in a long time - that's 100 pt potential. That wouldn't be exciting to you? There is a way to make Eichel work, if not exactly this trade. But if you're more worried about what the Blues would lose than what they'd gain then I wouldn't bother trying to convince you.

1- No, I didn't. I was utterly delighted, and not just because we paid relative peanuts for him. None of those players you mention was a proper 1C. Hell, Thomas had never played in the NHL at that point and I've always wanted to use Schenn on LW.

2- Well, then we differ on that, as well. Again, I'll point to Edmonton.

3- I don't agree with that, sorry. Points are great, but they aren't everything.

4- Why wouldn't I be as worried about the opportunity cost as I would be excited about the potential gain? That's just roster building 101. It all counts, it all must be considered.

You bring up Edmonton but Edmonton's problem very obviously isn't that they're paying Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl a ton of money though. It's that they're playing four million to Mikko Koskinen, three million to Zach Kassian, five million to Duncan Keith, three million to Cody Ceci, two million to Mike Smith....the list goes on and on. The elite talent is pulling their weight. McDavid and Draisaitl are underpayed. McDavid reportedly had a fourteen million+ offer on the table and there's a very realistic argument that they would be better today had he taken that, because that would have tied up more cap space in a player actually providing positive value rather than 37 year old Duncan Keith.



Yeah this isn't an "every shiny toy" situation. The teams that are interested in Tarasenko, or OEL before he got traded, or Seth Jones- those are an "every shiny toy situation". Big name players with non-elite talents or who are aged out of their prime (or, in OELs case, both). Eichel has some question marks and that's fine to be concerned about it (O'Reilly had a few before he was traded!) but every cup winner in the past ten years has had several elite players on the team. By alienating Tarasenko and Pietrangelo, the Blues have exactly one guy left. If we want this team to be a cup contender, we need elite talent. You can't sacrifice elite talent so that you can keep the Oscar Sundqvists, Ivan Barbashevs, and yes, Robert Thomases of the team. And that's the kind of stuff we've been doing since the cup win.

And fwiw, it was reported today that Eichel is finally scheduled for surgery soon and likely to be ready to go in December, so there is an end in sight to that.

1- I agree that Edmonton does some bad spending (though Ceci and Keith just arrived, so you can't count them when speaking of the past). But when two players take up more than a quarter of the cap, it's a problem.

2- Army's stupid contract work is a separate issue, but for what it's worth I agree 10000% that this is his major glitch. I get sick of seeing him take care of everyone else before dealing with the most important player(s), who he then drives off with an ego play.

As for "elite talent", the Blues have had plenty of it through the years. They never won the Cup until the team was based on overall balance that wears teams down, which just so happens to be, and has always been, my favorite way to build a team. Nowadays, pretty much every team has some elite talent - it's what they surround it with that makes a champion IMO.

3- Well, good for him. I'm still not interested. It's way too high of an opportunity cost.

Yeah, for sure those guys are brand new, bad example probably (especially if Edmonton does well this year lol) but Edmonton has had that issue for McDavid's entire tenure. Before Ceci it was Sekera, before Keith it was Neal, before Neal it was Lucic, before Kassian it was Russell. Armstrong's biggest weakness is contracts for his own guys for sure and Edmonton still makes his roster building looking insanely good.

And of course I'm not arguing for having an extremely top heavy lineup like the Leafs or Edmonton and I don't really think adding someone like Eichel would inherently do that. But teams do have to have both depth throughout the lineup and elite players, and that's something the 2019 Blues had. The idea that they were truly "balanced" is a bit of a myth. O'Reilly, Perron, Tarasenko all played close to a hundred more minutes in the playoffs than Sundqvist or Barbashev or Steen, and Pietrangelo/Parayko/Bouwmeester played over double what all the other defensemen played, because those are the guys that need to eat those minutes to have success. And it was good to have those crash and bang guys like Sundqvist and Barbashev and Maroon but look at what they were making.

I look at Tampa- the type of organization everyone should strive towards. They built the team the way you're talking- lots of depth, four lines going, etc. But that didn't compromise their elite talent. They were paying 9.5 million for Kucherov, 8.5 for Stamkos, 8.5 for Vasileviskiy, 7.8 for Hedman this year (Kucherov you can throw out if you'd like since he didn't play in the regular season but I'm talking playoffs). That's more than anyone on the Blues. And those were the guys playing the most time, as they should be. But that didn't stop them from surrounding them with really good players like Coleman, Gourde, Palat, Kilorn, McDonagh etc. They had such depth their third line was handling Montreal's top line, just like our second d-pairing went toe to toe with the top competition in 2019 when most teams have to use their top pair for that.

I don't think the Blues have that depth anymore, but they haven't really lost their "depth" guys. The guys they've lost (or are losing) are the guys taking those top minutes- Bouwmeester, Pietrangelo, Tarasenko etc., and yet they keep going back to the well with guys who are just fine and giving them more money. And I think it shows in our abysmal (for our standards) regular season this year and two poor playoff showings that we're hurting for the true top players.

I don't necessarily think Eichel is the ideal solution to that problem. All of your concerns about his injury are totally valid. But he is definitely 'a' solution, and even if we disagree on acquiring the player I don't think we can pretend that top talent isn't an issue for this team and point to success we had previously as the proof, because we leaned on the top guys then quite a bit even on a nominally "balanced" team.