ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Blues have added to their defensive corps, acquiring defenseman Brandon Carlo from the Toronto Maple Leafs for two third-round picks, Nos. 73 and 76.

The Blues came into Day 2 of the 2026 NHL Draft with three third-round picks at Nos. 73, 75 and 76.

Carlo, 29, has one year remaining on a six-year, $24.6 million contract at a $3.485 million cap hit ($4.1 million average annual value), and is owed $3.25 million in salary, likely a move as insurance for Adam Jiricek, in case the 2024 first-round pick isn't quite ready to make the jump to the NHL.

"That’s exactly it," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said. 'We think that Jiricek is going to come in and have a great training camp and I know you guys are sick of me saying this, but the NHL fails more people than players fail the NHL, so we don’t want to put someone in a position where they’re surviving. We want to put them in a position where they can potentially thrive. Jiricek is going to have the opportunity to come in here and push, but we’re in for the marathon with this young man. He played a lack of hockey last year, I think 90-plus games, but if you look at the number of games he played the two years before that, it wasn’t a lot. Sort of hope for the best and plan for the worst might be the best way to look at this. It’s a one-year deal too. We’re not bringing in a contract that’s going to preclude someone mid-season or next season. This is reflective of what I think the NHL should be as great competition, so when he’s ready to take someone’s job, he will."

There's also the benefit of adding a veteran to a group with Colton Parayko, Philip Broberg and Cam Fowler, along with Tyler Tucker and Matthew Kessel, who is a restricted free agent, to balance out younger, more inexperienced guys like Logan Mailloux and Theo Lindstein.

"We’re excited that he’s got size and length, his ability to kill plays, his experience I think," Armstrong said of Carlo. "It allows us to have four experienced players right now in Broberg, Parayko, Fowler and Carlo now, and then we have those younger guys that are going to push and prod and try to work their way in there (Mailloux, Lindstein, Jiricek). The way we were set before, we were going to rely on three young players to take a big role and things that we tried to accomplish the last few days of getting stronger up front and having strong goaltending, we think we’re going to be more competitive than we were last year and adding a defenseman there that can make us stronger and also provide us the ability to let the younger players to come at a more natural pace and also provide us depth for injuries was important for us. This sort of piggybacks what we’ve done the last couple days.

Carlo, who played three seasons with the Boston Bruins under Blues coach Jim Montgomery, played in 55 regular-season games with the Maple Leafs last season and had seven assists. Carlo's addition adds to the trade Friday of Mason McTavish, who played under new assistant coach Greg Cronin with the Anaheim Ducks.

"It’s been a benefit of having ‘Crow’ here on the Anaheim trade and having 'Monty' on the Boston relationship," Armstrong said. "Obviously we rely on our pro scouts to do the due diligence to prepare the information and then we verify our knowledge with Monty. Monty speaks very highly of his time with him, even higher of his character of how he fits into a team game. That’s an added benefit of having that extra knowledge."

The Bruins had initially retained 15 percent of Carlo's contract from a previous trade when they sent Carlo to the Maple Leafs.  He was acquired by Toronto in a trade with Boston on March 7, 2025, for forward Fraser Minten and two draft picks, including a first-rounder.   

He was drafted by the Bruins in the second round (37th overall) in the 2015 draft and has played 10 NHL seasons.

At 6-foot-5, 227 pounds, Carlo has 119 points (29 goals, 90 assists) in 692 regular-season games with a plus-137 rating.

Carlo has 14 points (five goals, nine assists)in 85 career postseason games. 

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