Armstrong unlikely to buy out contracts; will let own UFAs go to market, could deal for RFAs
Armstrong unlikely to buy out contracts; will let own UFAs go to market, could deal for RFAs
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- The St. Louis Blues will have a different makeup to their squad moving forward into the 2024-25 season. That's a given.
How they go about it is going to be the big question.
But one thing that fans can --or can't, depending on how you look at it -- count on is it's more than likely that Doug Armstrong won't be buying out any contracts.
That shouldn't be a surprise, since the Blues' GM hasn't bought out a contract ever.
Armstrong, in his 15th season as Blues president of hockey operations and GM, didn't rule it out but hasn't found a reason to do it.
Blues fans would look at the large contracts by their top four defensemen (Colton Parayko, Justin Faulk, Torey Krug and Nick Leddy) as candidates, but it's a foregone conclusion that Parayko isn't going anywhere and the Blues will get some relief in the summer of 2025 when the contracts of the aforementioned four lose their full no-trade clause protection, which would make it awfully tough for them to buy out a contract this summer.
"It's not something we have on the front burner," Armstrong said Monday. "I don't know what might happen between now and at the draft if you add in 'x' amount of dollars and you get a player. One way to do that is to buy someone out. We could do it. It's not something that we put in stone, like we'll never buy anybody out come hell or high water. It has to make economic sense, and we haven't seen that yet."
The Blues have just under $16 million in cap space available at their disposal to sign free agents if they so choose, but there are restricted free agents (Scott Perunovich and Nikita Alexandrov) that they'll have to address in the NHL roster. But they have the extra money, along with having a bump in the salary cap ceiling to $88 million moving forward, because they are allowing their unrestricted free agents (forwards Kasperi Kapanen and Sammy Blais and defenseman Marco Scandella, who could retire) go to market on July 1.
"Yeah, I've talked to everyone and we're going to let them test the market and we'll see what's there," Armstrong said. "We haven't closed any doors on anyone. That could change. All of the sudden, you ended up trading a player's rights that opens up a spot and then you go back to the guy and say, 'OK, would you like to come back?' But as of now, we've gotten this far, we have 'x' amount of cap space and we want to see what's available to us. We also want to see internal growth."
The wild card in all this is the RFA market. It's the kind of player(s) the Blues would covet to go with their plans of building a more polished younger roster through a potential trade, should one be available.
One of the obvious rumored names is Carolina Hurricanes forward Martin Necas, a potential RFA.
"If there's a player that's available that we give a future asset for, that we see a window of 3-4-5 years, that we control for that amount of time, then it's up to us to sell them on why they want to extend," Armstrong said. 'That's something we'd explore. Offer sheets are out there, too. I think there's a perception or a thought that offer sheets are taboo by managers. Offer sheets that don't work are taboo by managers. It's being in that position and then thinking they have no way to get out of that position. That's the assessment that we all make. I think over time we've seen offer sheets -- some have worked and some haven't worked. I think teams are more than willing to at least explore that now. The cap has gone up, but a lot of that money has already been spent by the teams. If you have an RFA that is in an uncomfortable spot, it's at least my job responsibility to assess is that an option that we should explore."
