I don't think Drury is worth a 3rd. He looks like a career 4th liner who will have a hard time hitting the 200 game mark.

@mokumboi @xercuses

Nik is a fantastic prospect. If the Blues tank next year blowing it up will not include trading Thomas. He’s simply too important for the future of the team. Honestly, he is probably the least likely player in the franchise to be traded

Yeah I'm not too exact on his value but that part really doesn't matter too much ill just change it to a 5th lmao.

Going about this I wanted to structure it similarly to the blackhawks rebuild when they moved on from a young piece like Debrincat who everyone thought would be a cornerstone of the rebuild. Thomas (or Kyrou) will bring by far the most value to the Blues. Thomas might not be too enthusiastic to spend his prime years in a rebuild, I mean lets say the average rebuild takes anywhere from 4-8 years depending on a teams lottery luck (A team like the Devils vs the Sabers). So lets say 6 years, by the time the rebuild is over he will be 30 with one year left on his deal. Most of his prime will be behind him spent on a team that was bottom 8 every year. If he was 20-22 the Blues could get away with it but he's 24. Not super appealing to a player about to enter their most competitive years.

If anything, the Blues will be retooling for the next few years, not a 4-8 year rebuild. Snuggerud, Dvorsky, Bolduc, Hofer, and Buchinger are some highly touted prospects who should all be ready to contribute in the next few years. Also, Thomas & Kyrou just signed 8x8.125 contracts that start this year, highly doubt either of them will be moved.

Is that core good enough to even compete for a divisional playoff spot though? I mean the guys you mentioned aren't exactly Tarasenko,O'rielly,Pietrangelo and Binningtion (that one year he went crazy). If the blues really want to compete they need to grab some real top-end talents and that includes sucking the next few years. Even if Thomas and Kyrou both stay through out wouldn't you think the blues would wanna really tank for top picks rather than having the 12th pick for the next 4-6 years.

I understand your thought process but the comparisons between Chicago and the Blues are not equal.

Let’s pretend the Blues tank next season. They would have Buchnevich, Vrana, Kapanen, Faulk, and Parayko as possible trade pieces.

Buchnevich has another year left on his contract and would return a first round pick plus a really good prospect (most likely)

By tanking let’s also pretend they wind up with a top 5 pick. They would have a top 5 pick, plus the prospect and another first round pick from the Buchnevich trade, Dvorsky, Snuggerud, Dean, Bolduc, Neighbors, Stenberg, Lindstein, Alexandrov, Buchinger, Tucker, Loof, Hofer, and Zherenko.

Chicago had nowhere near this amount of prospects when they decided to trade DeBrincat.

Anyone, including Army, would add Thomas and Kyrou to their group of players, not trade them away.

Going to 2 part this.

In terms of OP. Nikishin is a really good prospect. Ponomarev isn’t really all that important to the Blues or to the trade in general. The picks are almost assuredly towards the back half of the rounds. Value wise alone, I think I’d search for a bit more. Now that could certainly change dependent on how Nikishin follows up his past season. If he has another fantastic season and has a clear route to NA were certainly talking about a guy that’s highly highly desirable. That being said though, there’s pretty much 0 possible outcomes where Thomas is moved. I think realistically he’s the only roster player you can say that about. Kyrou is a close second, but given he is very prone to making mistakes (due to his high offensive capabilities) I could see them entertaining moving him, but still extremely unlikely. Our forward prospect pool is looking fantastic currently. We have 3 guys that are generally rated in the top 50 of prospects who all have pretty high floors and a high likelihood of at least making the NHL (Dvorsky, Snuggerud, Bolduc). That’s also cushioned by guys like Dean, Stenberg and Alexandrov who are pretty certain in some capacity to be NHL players most likely in the middle 6. That’s a lot of ELC and cost controlled seasons on guys and flexibility to fix our back end if necessary.

In terms of your most recent post. It’s very true we don’t have a Pietrangelo in our system or on our roster. But for replacing ROR and Tarasenko if that’s the mold that you want to look in to, we can achieve that and probably over-achieve that. Tarasenko has pretty much always been a one dimensional offensive winger. That lines up pretty similarly with what Kyrou is currently. ROR is certainly much harder to replace. But between Thomas and Dvorsky our center depth is actually healthier than it was in the cup year. There’s just not many scenarios outside or every single prospect busting where it’s conceivable we tank more than 4 years. Within that timeframe, finding a top end defenseman or two should be achievable during the draft. Parayko for all of the misguided hate he gets still very reasonably has 4-5 very good seasons in him. However extracting them is going to take restructuring the rest of our defense which really may take between 2-4 years assuming they don’t bounce back to career norms next year. You’re looking at contracts in that time frame that will be expiring of Faulk, Krug, Leddy, Binnington, Schenn, Saad, Hayes, Buchnevich. That’s pretty much all of our current cap aside from the 23m that’s split between Parayko, Thomas and Kyrou. All of which I’m fairly confident are part of a winning solution going forward. Now also factor in cost control for the following young players who will most likely be players for the Blues for the next 3-8 years.

C: Thomas, Dvorsky, Dean, Alexandrov*
W: Kyrou, Snuggerud, Bolduc, Neighbors*, Stenberg
D: Lindstein, Buchinger, Parayko

* indicates either possible substantial cap hit, or removal from the plans.

That’s likely 8-9/12 forwards. Is there a superstar in there? Maybe not, but if your argument is based off of the cup winning formula we had we didn’t really have a superstar at that point in time either.

Our issue lies within the construction of our defense. There has to be more responsibility out on guys 3-7 in even strength so Parayko and Leddy aren’t playing 33%+ of the game in a shutdown role so the other two pairs can get 60-70% oz starts.

Binnington also probably isn’t an elite goalie, but he’s certainly NHL caliber.

Our issues will fix themselves. Trading our young 1C is the last direction we should go to try and fix our back end.

Canes aren’t moving Nikishin so the trade is quite moot

Not even the worst Thomas trade I’ve seen

Look at the leafs ones, at least this one makes sense even if it’s value is way way off

Step away from the pipe, rock star. Good slappin' grief.

Seriously, man, you need to get off the rock. It's destroying your brain. Exactly nothing you're imagining about this entire Thomas/Blues thing has any association with reality whatsoever. Just FYI.