ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Blues have made the trade they were coveting.

The team has acquired 23-year-old center Mason McTavish from the Anaheim Ducks for two first-round picks, Nos. 15 and 29 in this year's draft.

The Blues, who had four first-round picks in this year's draft were left with pick Nos. 11 and 16 after the trade.

They acquire a player that has the flexibility to be a center and/or wing that is in the second year of a six-year, $42 million contract ($7 million average annual value).

"Pedigree for sure," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said of McTavish. "He's a top-three overall pick recently, captain of Team Canada in the past. Playoff performer in the OHL. This year was a down year for him and he understands that. We talked to him -- obviously we do our research on this -- I know what he's been doing back home, what type of training and how he felt about his season. He's taken that head on and wants to come back (strong).

"For a team like St. Louis, it's important to get players that we can grow and build with. I think he plays a 200-foot game, he's got a dynamic shot and he's growing. You get to that age of 24, 25 and you have that long runway of that meat of your career, and he's getting close to that meat of his career. We have him under contract and we can grow with him. He's an exciting player for us in an organization that was void at that position of having a lot of depth."

McTavish is coming off a 41-point season (17 goals, 24 assists) and has played in 304 regular-season games in his four-plus year career (77 goals, 104 assists).

McTavish was a healthy scratch twice for the Ducks in the playoffs and the Blues know they will get a motivated player.

" I wasn’t in Anaheim and I don’t want to go through it," Armstrong said. 'You come in and you’re the third overall pick, you go to an organization, they’re growing. Pat Verbeek has done an unbelievable job there of acquiring those assets. All of the sudden he makes a couple of trades, they’re getting better and in sport, business also is part of the actual athletic competition and Pat and 'Mac' couldn’t find a contract, so you have a new coach coming in in Joel Quenneville, he wants to get up and running, an assistant captain is in a contract dispute, misses time and he’s 22 at the time. There’s a whole lot of things that go on behind the scenes when you’re 22 that are first-time things and that I don’t want to say you’re not ready for it, but it’s different. I’ve been in organizations where players have missed camp and very rarely it equates to a good season. I don’t know why, and then they get up and running too and Carlsson was there. I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t know why he couldn’t turn the tide there. I think he played 10 playoff games for them and he had six points. At the end of the year, he was producing for them when needed. But I think he probably has learned a lot about himself, he’s learned a lot about the business over the last year. Where he’s free right now is his pockets are full, so he doesn’t have to worry about that, he’s been battered a little bit with the season and he’s extremely driven to get what he believes is his rightful spot in an organization and on team and in the league and we’re excited to give him that platform to do it."

The price for McTavish was a bit higher than originally reported, and there were multiple reports that the Ducks were looking for a first-round pick and a prospect, but the Blues ultimately felt this was the player they were targeting. There weren't a lot of other options available.

"Yeah, there wasn't a lot going on," Armstrong said. "A lot of talk on the trade front. I called one manager today and I said, 'Wow, you and I almost made a big deal and we hadn't talked in two weeks.' So there's a lot of stuff out there that's not true, but that's just the time of year that stuff happens. We focused in on things that we thought we could accomplish and Anaheim was one of those.

"Pat and I had talked over the last few days. We had other conversations. We got to a position where if he was going to move him for picks, he knew what we would offer. So it just sort of went radio silent for a while and then as it got closer, he said, 'Would you still do that deal?' We liked the players that were at 16, 17, 18, in that area, so we weren't concerned that he was going to take our player at that point because we had some guys in that block. So when pick 13 went, we talked. He told me who he wanted to take because nothing could happen at that point. I just sat there to see if the team picking No. 14 called that name and they didn't and I knew we had a trade.

"We were not going to move (No.) 11."

With the acquisition of Connor McMichael on Tuesday from the Washington Capitals in the package that cost the Blues Jordan Kyrou and now McTavish, the Blues could be considered done. 

Or not ...

"I think that with no second-round pick tomorrow, we have three thirds. We can maybe manipulate that into the second, but that’s years away," Armstrong said. "No matter what we do tomorrow, that’s years away. Alex and his inner circle and we’ll sit down, now we can sit with the coach. We’ve gone through where we think these guys can play in theory, but they’re Blues now. So now where are they going to play and how can we use free agency, how can we use surplus of players if we think we have those to fill out areas that might be a strength or a deficiency. I think we’re stronger than we were at the end of last season adding the two players that we added. Now we have the opportunity to look at free agency, now we have the opportunity to look at trades to see what we want to do. What excites me is the support of the fan base of wanting to build around a certain group of players, a certain age of players and try to give them the opportunity to have enough assets to grow and push."

That's certainly an indication the Blues aren't quite done just yet.

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