ST. LOUIS – In true Doug Armstrong form, the St. Louis Blues general manager kept things close to the vest in regards to any trade scuttlebutt.
“Yeah, I'm not going to get into that,” Armstrong said when asked about any of the names involving Blues players circulating the rumor trails.
And that’s nothing new.
There has been speculation, and confirmed here that the Blues were one of the teams poking around with interest in what it would take to get a trade done with defenseman Noah Dobson, who was traded by the New York Islanders to the Montreal Canadiens for forward Emil Heineman and the 16th and 17th picks in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft in Los Angeles on Friday.
Do they stick with trying to improve the defense, or do they run it back with the group they had – minus pending unrestricted free agent Ryan Suter – next season? Do they look at improving the center ice position, which Armstrong said seems to be happening with most – of not all – of the league?
“I think that we had a great final push there with our center ice the way it was,” Armstrong said. “I think [Dalibor] Dvorsky is coming. How quickly can he get here? But that Schenn-Holloway-Kyrou line was very good and then ‘Snuggy’ comes in.
“If you put him with [Robert] Thomas and ‘Buch’ ... ‘Schenner’ is not getting younger. He could do the job, but if we could support him, that would be great, but he can do the job. If we could add another layer of people in there. But I think it's easier to say than to do when you look at the number of teams trying to accomplish that. You saw the number of teams trying to accomplish that last year and those centers made a lot of money and you guys can judge how it worked out for everybody. There's a shortage of players. There's a shortage of players in certain areas. It's just reality.”
So just saying, if the Blues don’t make some big splash, don’t be taken aback. Something could happen. They will do something, and it may not be on Saturday, it may not be Sunday. It may not be July 1. Armstrong did say there could be some bargains out there to be had mid-July, or so.
“I think we're excited about the direction that we've taken the organization,” Armstrong said. “We have a balance of veteran players -- players in that group that I tell you about, 20-25. I think I can say that for another 3-4 days and then it'll be 20-26 because that's when Robert turns 26. We're going to have growth inside. I did talk about our wings. We're very strong on the wing right now. I talked about, we're one of 27 teams that would love to find a second-line center. That's just the reality of it. I don't know if we can. You've seen since we last talked, these guys are signing with their own teams. Everyone is finding a way. You have to just be prepared to react to what's available on July 1. If we make a trade, it will be an apple for an apple. We're going to trade someone that we may have a surplus for someone in an area that we need in the same age group. I don't see us, like we talked last week, moving a younger player for an older player for a short-term fix. That isn't where we're at in our maturation.”