That seems like a lot of effort to not improve...

Meh. Wouldn't move my first rounder from last year to make such a miniscule upgrade from Scandella to Pettersson.

The question is, is Pettersson that much better than Scandella that it's worth losing the guy you just drafted 16th oa? To me, the answer is no. Neither guy is what I'd call a steady top4 guy, they've each had times where they look the part.

And I don't think Thomas' camp would take 1 x 1.5 at this point. I think they need to find more money for him somehow - with Sundqvist on LTIR to start the season, they at least have some time to manage things, but I don't think he's signing for anything below, say, 2.25m on a 1 yr deal.

If you put a lot of stock in analytics, he's pretty significantly better. He's had really solid defensive numbers and holds his own offensively, and he's six years younger. They also have extremely different strengths- Scandella is mostly only good at driving offense while Pettersson is a defensive defenseman, and we have so many offense-first defensemen on this team especially if Perunovich makes the team. Pettersson might not "look the part", but so much with defensemen is about what doesn't happen rather than what does, and at the risk of sounding simplistic, very little bad stuff happens when he's on the ice.

Don't think it's worth losing Bolduc over but I also don't think it would cost that much to shed Scandella or someone else (Tarasenko?) to make the cap work. And also Johan Larsson is pretty damn good so that's nice too. He should be a Blues FA target next year for the fourth line.