Quoting: TMLBRIAN
Both teams are also in much different places. Leafs are all in and are trading picks and prospects like candy. St Louis is in a re-tool and asset collection phase.
Of our higher end prospects, Leaf fans tend to trade Robertson the most because of his injury history. But he isn't a lost cause yet. He has a ton of potential. Potential doesn't always pan out though.
This is a pretty rational assessment.
Couple reasons though why I don’t see the Blues entertaining something like this.
1. Vrana fits our core age range pretty well. For now I think the Blues are looking to build around Thomas/Kyrou and hoping to have players develop with them. Even if it narrows the window a bit. We can’t really get out of having 5/6 vet contracts long term, nor are they bad players.
2. Blues are wanting to get competitive as quick as possible and really have the foundation to. As touched in above, there’s good reason to be optimistic about next season.
3. Vrana produced really well for us, and we got him at an extremely low cost. There’s really no reason to panic about not getting value out of Vrana. He’s purely found money and he was great for us. He also added a dynamic of speed to our group that really opened things up.
4. Robertson has serious injury concerns. He’s looked like a fantastic prospect, but every step of the way he’s been injury riddled. It’s fairly concerning with a guy with a smaller frame that isn’t a pure skill guy. I like Robertsons game, but I don’t see how he ever puts together a complete season because of his frame unfortunately.
5. If we’re out of the race at the trade deadline Vrana could seriously bring back a haul. I’m not sure what his off-ice issues were or if they’ve cleared up. But he’s a very young high end goal scorer with serious speed at a cap hit that’s affordable even without retention. Throw in retention and you’re looking at a guy who is very feasibly a 30 goal scorer at 1.3m on a cap hit. Every team can afford that and every team most likely will want to add goal scoring. The potential return could be very high.
There’s alot to like about Robertson, but there’s serious concern, and it’s not a position the Blues really need help on. He probably has a higher ceiling than a Neighbors or Dean, but has a pretty high probability of not being able to get past the injury concerns. I don’t think he has quite the impact a Bolduc or Snuggerud will have or look to have and the Blues already have these players. That also doesn’t factor in what happens this draft and doesn’t account for guys like Kasikamaki or Robertsson who are also pretty decent forward prospects the Blues have.
I think you’re going to have a hard time selling Robertson for what he could be because the likelihood he becomes an NHL regular is slowly looking less than the likelihood he can’t stay healthy enough to carve out a career unfortunatelynb