Quoting: AC14
I'm not adverse to adding Chychrun. I am adverse to paying the amount that he should receive with his contract.
I think whether or not we're in a window yet, we need to explore all options to improve the defense. We have enough pieces up front that are very close. We don't have anything near that on the backend unfortunately.
If it were a different world and Chychrun were an RFA this season and would extend long term I personally would be very happy to move the two firsts we've acquired and a bit more to work out that long term contract with him. I just reserve my doubts that we're going to be any good for the next year or two regardless of what we do, especially if we trade Parayko and replace him with essentially Krug 2.0 in Barrie. This defense could possibly work (in the ACGM) if we had an unbelievably good offense. An offense you can almost gaurantee averages near 4 goals per game. The puck moving part could really throw the team into a fast paced transition team. However, if i'm doing that i'm looking elsewhere aside from Bunting Compher and Donato. And it's not gauranteed to work.
Personally, I just think moving Parayko is a pretty big mistake. We've been asking him to ascent to a 1D and putting him in the matchups to do so yet handcuffing him with terrible partners and giving him the full blame for it. He's not played fantastic this season, probably not to his standards either. But he is furthest from the issue on our blue line.
I mean yeah you're saying the same thing I'm saying about Chychrun. If this was a Timo Meier-esque situation and you can trade for a top pairing defenseman and lock him in for 8 years at age 24 then like maybe the acquisition cost makes sense. But Chychrun isn't a guy that's anchoring your defense on a contending team, like Meier anchors your top line. He's a good top 4 defenseman that will be a decent part of it. This is a hard cap league. The teams that are looking to acquire him are paying for the player on that contract. They're not paying for just the player. The reason he costs so much is because of his contract. Teams that can't take advantage of that contract don't have any business acquiring a defenseman like that. And the Blues can't take advantage of that contract. So you can have the conversation, but to me this guy is basically Darnell Nurse making half as much as Darnell Nurse. No one is selling the farm for Darnell Nurse at half price.
As for your take on the offense...I mean I think that's what they tried to do the last couple years, bringing in guys like Krug, Faulk, Leddy and Perunovich. Go high octane offense and hope it holds. It worked for a year when a goalie stood on his head. And then it didn't work. I don't believe it's a sustainable pathway to contention. You need to be able to win multiple ways.
I think no matter what you do you need to build part of the defense through the draft, because there's just no way to get top pairing defensemen otherwise. But when you explore options for improving the defense, I don't think going after name brands like Chychrun is efficient. You need to go after guys who are undervalued by their organization, don't have a pathway onto their teams. Ville Heinola, Reilly Walsh, Erik Brannstrom, Kyle Masters. Colorado, New Jersey, Tampa have had tremendous success in doing this. (Toews, Girard, Cernak, Sieganthaler, Graves, Sergachev were all acquired after they were drafted and some before they were even full time NHL players).
Re: Parayko, yeah, he's not a top pairing defenseman, but I honestly think he's been our best defenseman this year. That thought is probably worth prison time to some Blues fans, but he's the only guy who is good in his own zone. I'm not totally opposed to moving him but I'm not ready to do addition by subtraction on him like a lot of people seem to be. He'd be the last of the term guys I'm worried about moving.