Pittsburgh has been trying to move one of their own LHD for a bit now to make room for Pierre Oliver Joseph. I do think they should move on from Scandella but only if they're bringing in a proper top/high end second pairing LHD and that's a lot to put on Perunovich right away. If they just need the roster room/cap space for Perunovich, Bortuzzo seems like the most expendable since Perunovich can play his off wing. I also like how Walman has played.

Walman has played good and I think he’s the best return for guys that the blues would move, bortz is too much of a locker room guy to move. He knows his role and plays it well. He is the guy Clifford was supposed to be for toughness. I think perunovich is ready tho it’s hard to see a guy who won the hobey baker award be in the minors when every other team has had great success bringing them up as soon as they could.

Yeah, the Pens have no room. They're trying move LHD's since they have FIVE. Plus, I know the creator of this AGM is not concerned with salary, but the Pens literally have less than $200K available in free space.

Hextall has also said the Pens 1st and 2nd rounders are off limits.

Pens swiftly decline.

why on earth would we do this ? same with the pens lose lose trade

Well if he was the guy Clifford was supposed to be why did we need Clifford? Bortuzzo's been on this team for years. I get that he's a good locker room guy, but Ryan Reaves was a good locker room guy too. So was Chris Thorburn. It doesn't mean they're untouchable. Bortuzzo has never played a full season with the Blues in 8 seasons with us. Not because he's been hurt, but because he's a seventh defenseman. Those players can't be locked in. We have a lot of good character on this team. At the end of the day, the better players have to play. Perunovich is ready, like you said, for a bigger role and to be on an NHL team. But Parayko and Scandella are both playing 20+ minutes a night right now. I don't think you can just gift that to Perunovich. Bortuzzo is playing fourteen, that you can give to Perunovich.

If it's that unpalatable though, just send down Mikkola and bring Perunovich up that way. Mikkola isn't doing much and Bortuzzo can still provide his locker room presence as the 7th defenseman. Either way, our defense needs a shot in the arm and Perunovich is ready.

Scandella is slow and hasn’t been productive for the blues since he came here. Scandella is averaging 22 minutes a game shuffle some to faulk and Krug is you’re worried about ice time. Perunovich could handle 18 plus a night. Mikola is more defensive and I could see him develop into a parayko type player. Clifford and scandella will need to move for the blues to be able to bring up perunovich and get sunny back.

This trade was just thrown out idc who scandella goes to but I think walman is a good package deal for wherever they could go. It would put draft picks in our pocket and free up so cap space

The second would be conditional based on walman because I believe he can develop into a top 4 d man, he skates well defends good and has offensive side to him. I didn’t know about the pens situation I just picked them because scandella has NTC so he would have to approve any trade and who wouldn’t want to go play with Crosby Malkin letang in their final push for a cup.

(sigh)

Amid all the Scandella scapegoating, has anyone noticed he's currently doing his job and playing hard minutes against top lines with 86% D-zone starts.

Have you noticed his play tho inside the d zone, he has had instances where he is too slow to the puck, turned the puck over trying to make cross ice pass which led to a scoring opportunity, he almost caused ROR to turn the puck over in front of the net because he was standing there like a pylon watching him battle for the puck instead of providing him a release or just getting out of his way and he doesn’t produce. He was a quick fix when j bow went down time to move on

He is doing very very well, but his strength has been offensively (2.59 xGF/60- good!), not defensively (2.84 xGA/60- not so good). Also most shifts start on the fly so zone start% doesn't really mean a whole lot in general but especially four games into the season.

If scandella was playing like he did with the wild I’d be all for it but he hasn’t been that player in a long time and the blues lack speed on the back end.

He hasn't been the top four stalwart he was brought in to be, but he definitely hasn't been our biggest liability. You said we could just give more more minutes to Krug but Krug has not been good at all to start the season (3.88 xGA/60, truly abysmal). He needs to be much more sheltered than he has been, which is not what you want from a guy making 6.5 million but that bed is pretty much made. The reason Scandella is a popular candidate to move is not because his play has warranted it (well, maybe last season but not this season so far, small sample size and all that), but because we need someone to handle those minutes. If Scandella keeps this up, good enough- it's a massive improvement over last year, even if it's short of his Wild days- but I don't think you can lose him now and replace him with Perunovich. They need someone more steady and proven up there.

I think the Blues are trying to make Walman that guy. He's been getting lots of reps with Parayko and has an extremely impressive 1.6 xGA/60. If Walman proves he can handle those minutes more effectively than Scandella, then Scandella becomes a bit of a luxury. And with his solid play this year coupled with the explosion of defenseman contracts (Derek Forbort makes almost as much as him now???) he might actually fetch a good return. But patience is key there, because our weak spot has still been the defense and you don't want to make it weaker by losing someone who is actually contributing, which Scandella currently is.

I’m not worried about those goal for stats in the first 4 games, Krug wasn’t brought in for defense he was brought in to produce and be the quarterback for PP. walman is good but perunovich is better than him. Krug will adjust just like faulk did his 2nd year. Defensemen can’t just jump in and produce on new teams it takes a year to learn the system and how the rest of the guys on offense play. Faulk showed great improvement last year and so far Krug has done the same. Also the stats are skewed because most of the goals the blues give up have been late in the third while the other team has goalie pulled. I don’t think corsi adjusts for those situations they call them 5 on 5 sometimes the eye test is still better

Yeah, the Pens left side is Dumoulin, Pettersson, Matheson, Riikola and POJ. No more room.

This is for the blues don’t really care who scandella goes to if the pens are already set

Tthe Blues have given up exactly one goal at 5v6 this year and yet have given up 6 goals in the third so that "struggling when goalie is pulled" thing isn't true at all. And that illustrates the problem with the eye test right there- you've seen the third period struggles, you've seen a goal at 5v6, and you believe that we just haven't been tight enough defensively when the goalie is pulled. But if you just look at the most basic of basic stats- when goals were scored and how many people were on the ice when it was scored- you would know that isn't true. The Blues have been struggling at 5v5 late in games primarily, so even if Corsi or expected goals are skewed by counting 5v6 goals as even strength that's not where our problem has been. And if Krug's strength is offense as you say (and I agree with, of course) he should not be on the ice at 6v5 anyway.

My point is not that Krug sucks or just can't cut it defensively, nor am I saying that I don't expect him to get better (though I am not sure what you've seen this season to indicate that he has already this year other than we've been winning). I'm just saying if a player is currently struggling- which he is- you don't just give them more responsibility. They have to earn that. He hasn't earned it. Krug was never an all situations player in Boston. For him to be the best he can be, he needs to be treated how we treated Dunn this year- sheltered minutes with a heavy emphasis on getting him in the offensive zone.

Also if it's difficult for defensemen to come into a new team and adjust why do you want to give Perunovich second pair (if not more) minutes right away? And I agree that Perunovich is better than Walman, but Walman is better than Bortuzzo and Mikkola so he's not the guy you want to get rid of. If you want to bring up Perunovich, Mikkola or Bortuzzo are the ones you want to jettison.

Sorry it was 3 in the first game one was called back, and one was 5 on 4 with goalie pulled not 5 on 6. But if Krug isn’t doing better this year why does he have a PPG pace right now. He’s looking like he did with Boston when he put up 50 plus points. He was at least a 40 point player for them every year except 14-15. He seems more comfortable with knowing the guys he’s skating with and his production is going to continue especially on the PP.

As for perunovich stepping in the blues organization pretty much runs the same thing in the minors. Bring up perunovich would be easier for him to get going than someone who spent the last 8 years with a different organization. If you can single out Krug for being irresponsible on every goal that was given up while he was on the ice than I can see what you’re talking about him defensively but so far I have yet to see anything where he was main contributor for goal being scored. Look at yotes game, last goal scored by them he was stuck out there with bortz, kostin, bozak, ROR, the play became a scramble for the puck found it’s way to the slot and was put in, he was covering his guy in the front of the net, the other time he was out there was against the kings Clifford seem to be the one who screwed up his coverage when Krug pressed his guy and that took him up high so Clifford was slow in rotating to cover Krug a spot. The Avs game he was on the ice for their first goal where Thomas was slow to get back and left the Cross ice pass for the one timer across which was played well by our D, Thomas gets back a little quicker he’s able to disrupt the cross ice pass, the last goal he was on the ice for was the 6 on 5 goal. So like I said the eye test must be done because I don’t see how you can say he is playing bad. Go watch him highlight him in every game they’ve played he’s been pretty damn responsible and compare his play to scandella. Stats don’t take other players mistakes into factoring the numbers. Think about how many time the blues pulled their goalie then gave up the empty net, faulk and Krug were killed last year because the blues gave up goals damn near every time when they pulled the goalie.

That is my response to Krug being better than your analytics.

Points aren't everything, especially with defensemen. Tyson Barrie led the league in points last year, but everyone knows that he isn't one of the best defensemen out there because he's also one of the worst defensemen in the league at defending. And that's not to say that there isn't a role for those kinds of players, but you have to use them correctly or you're going to be exposed.

And I think the eye test is a very flawed way of evaluating defensemen. JFresh, one of the best in the game at explaining advanced stats, breaks it down this way in an analysis of Drew Doughty:

"Analysts argue that it is impossible to analyze defence using the eye test alone for a variety of reasons. For one thing, oftentimes the things that matter on defence are the things that don’t happen - a defender has his stick blocking a lane, forcing a forward outside; a close gap limits a puck carrier’s options. Most of our casual viewing eyes are drawn to things like body checks, shot blocks, steals, and puck battles in front of the net, but these don’t necessarily add up to “good defence.” What if a player throws checks and blocks shots so much because they’re always stuck in their own end? What if a player steals two pucks a game but is bad positionally?

The core object of defence, we’d argue, is to limit the quantity and quality of chances that your goalie has to face. All those little events and non-events (the poke checks, the battles, the blocked lanes, etc.) are just ways to try to make that happen. Fortunately, we now have access to statistics that not only measure how good a player is at achieving that goal, but isolate that impact from his teammates, opponents, and other context factors."

He goes on to list Expected Goals (xGF/xGA) as one of these stastics, and yes analysis in this way does isolate from the mistakes of individual players. Expected goals models can break up a game into sequences, from when a team gains possession of the puck to when a team loses it, about 250 sequences per game. From there, you can create a mathematical decision tree for each player involved in the sequence to determine an expected goals number- usually a very small decimal number. This is something that is admittedly complicated but is all laid out in an article such as this this one: It's not just about the actual goals that happened while Krug was on the ice. Obviously that's what matters in the game, but big picture it's what happens in all of these sequences when the other team has possession.

And I'm not saying it's a perfect analysis and in small sample sizes like this Krug's numbers are bound to be volatile, but Krug had very low xGA numbers during his time in Boston (high of 2.22) and that climbed when he was in St Louis (high of 2.54). That might not seem like a lot, but elite shooters can take advantage of that. This all works out if Krug can outperform those numbers with high expected goals for- as you noted, he has a PPG and he is primarily known as an offensive defenseman. He did this often in Boston, with his xGF > xGA during his entire time there. It's been the opposite in St. Louis.

I do think he'll be better than we've seen, but we just haven't seen it yet and we don't need to pretend like we have. We need to adjust accordingly, and shelter his minutes more and allow him to get his game going and then increase accordingly as he does. You mention that Krug and Faulk got burned all the time last year with the goalie pulled, yet you don't think that's indicative of players who are best suited for the second pair routinely playing 20 minutes a night? I think that's pretty obvious. Shelter his minutes, let him cook offensively, and get guys who can handle the defensive assignments and the Blues and Krug will have a lot more success.

This is exactly why sports are becoming obnoxious because of all the deep analytics like you’re talking about. Keep it simple you’re writing papers trying to convey your points on analytics but I have given you the exact plays that happened when he was on the ice for goals allowed this year. You can spew analytics all you want about him this year not one goal was his fault or related to his play, also I was talking about when the blues pulled their goalie and they were scored on which would affect their numbers not the opposite way around where they are defending a man advantage attack. You’re talking about Krug who is solid defensively but is known for his offensive game but you’re throwing out defensive stats like he couldn’t take on a couple extra shifts a night. He is a plus 3 in 5 games his first year in stl he was plus 11. If he was as bad as you are explaining with these analytics then he would of kept the trend of being a minus player like he had been the last 5 years. Stats like what you’re talking about single out a player and not the teams structure on offense and defense this is where the eye test comes into play. If a player isn’t suited for the system or they are new to the system they will struggle in your deep analytics, but just like faulk struggled his first year his 2nd year he was our best back end player, Krug came to the team in the middle of Covid protocol as well which meant he couldn’t get to know his new team before the season because they weren’t able to do anything but play hockey and go home, no team bonding. You can throw out any stat for him this year but you won’t go watch his play and the examples I pointed out earlier, if you watch that get back to me and tell me what you see wrong but if not don’t bring up his stats about expected GAA or anything like that 5 games into the season.