Blues general manager disappointed in 12-15-7 start, won't rule out any notion of how roster could be transformed in the present and future
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- It certainly hasn’t been the start to a season that the St. Louis Blues envisioned, their coaches envisioned, their fans envisioned and certainly the management team envisioned.
Most notably general manager Doug Armstrong, who spoke about the team’s 12-15-7 start on Tuesday at Centene Community Ice Center.
And with an array of questions fielded, one of the most notable ones is with the reality of the season as it is, has Armstrong, in his final year as Blues GM before taking reigns with the sold responsibility of being president of hockey operations, brought himself to the thought of perhaps trading off some of his veteran players who have expiring contracts within the next couple of seasons?
Unless there’s some sort of drastic turnaround with the group the Blues have right now, this team is nowhere to being the playoff team it was less than a year ago, nowhere near the team it was post 4 Nations Face-Off, so it has to be brought forward that veterans with shorter-term contracts (Jordan Binnington through 2027, Brayden Schenn through 2028, Justin Faulk through 2027, Oskar Sundqvist through 2026) who can see that the path to winning here may not be in the short term considering the ages and experience in the league, would it be in the best interests to gauge if said players would prefer to move on to more immediate contending teams?
“I’ve done that in the past,” Armstrong said of trading veterans, most recently Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko in 2023. “You want a shared vision. I hope it doesn’t get to that. But I’m hoping they hope I don’t call them and say ‘This is what we want, are you OK with it?’ I would want to do what’s right for them, by them because whatever success I’ve had, big or small, it’s off their backs. But I also want to make sure everyone is aware, too, that my loyalty is to the St. Louis Blues more than anything else. It’s to the organization, it’s to the fanbase. More than the owners or anyone else, my loyalty is to the Blues. I’m going to do whatever I think is right for Blues.”
There would most certainly be an appetite for some of these Blues veterans should this conversation take place. But until then/if that even happens, they are Blues, including Binnington, who could certainly draw interest as a Stanley Cup champion, like Schenn and Sundqvist.
“Like I view them all, we need to them to play their best right now for us,” Armstrong said. “And all that stuff takes care of itself. If (Binnington) gets to a point where he’s playing his best and we’re not there and he comes to me, or we go to him, I understand. That’s part of the business. But I don’t view Binnington any different than I view other guys that I’ve worked with for a long time. Quite honestly, my singular focus is to get better. But my job responsibility is different. They can only control getting better at what they do on the ice. I can’t control that. Our job is to listen to how other people view us and view them, and respond to that. I don’t know if that helped at all.”
Last season when there was doom and gloom, Armstrong went with his instincts and stayed pat with the group at hand, and it went on a tear, including a franchise-best 12-game winning streak to get into the Western Conference playoffs as the second wild card before losing to the Winnipeg Jets in seven games in the first round.
This team, currently crushed at the forward position with a plethora of injuries, has shown little to no inclination that it could make a push for the playoffs, despite only being four points out of a very mediocre West.
So how much patience can Armstrong show? Can he afford to see if this team can put together a run?
“Yeah, I hope they go on a run,” Armstrong said. “I hope a lot of things, but hope is a bad strategy. The reality of our industry is, as a group, they’ve got to go on a run, so when the phone rings I say ‘No.’ Historically you look when trades happen, they don’t happen right now. The meat of what teams do is closer to the deadline. Now anything can happen — (Quinn) Hughes happened last week – but the majority of the guys, especially in Olympic years, the teams that are close to the cap, they want to make that deal the day after the Olympics because they don’t want that cap eating away at their cap for three weeks when they’re not playing them. When they’re not playing, they don’t want to pay. It’s not the money, it’s the cap space. So our job is to prepare for anything on any given day, but our job is to also understand the natural flow of the NHL and when things happen. Now saying that, Hughes got traded and goalies got traded (Tristan Jarry to Edmonton for Stuart Skinner). I’m just going on the actuary table, but there are situations that could just take one phone call for something. With that being said, we’re not considering trading players less than the value we think that they’re worth.”
In other words, Armstrong won’t be trading players for the sake of trading them, and teams must understand that they can’t come and try to robbing the cradle in St. Louis. But at this point, all options are on the table.
“Yeah and again I’m not doing this to threaten anybody,” Armstrong said. “But as Bill Parcells said, ‘You are what you are,’ and right now we’re 29th in win percentage, so everything has to be considered and addressed. The way the league operates and I haven’t spent a lot of time in this area – more times in the other area where you’re calling. When we were a highly functioning team, you would call teams that weren’t highly functioning and say ‘What are you going to do?’ I’d say, ‘I know this guy is going to help me, what are your thoughts?’ Now we’re starting to field those calls that we don’t want to field. But I can’t stop people from calling and we’re not doing our due-diligence if we’re not listening.”
It doesn’t mean Armstrong wants to trade players; he simply may not have a choice unless this train gets back on the rails and quickly.
“Again, I don’t want to come across like … when you’re in this position, like Wayne Gretzky got traded,” Armstrong said. “There’s really no untouchables – not on the St. Louis Blues – there’s really few untouchables in the league … Sid (Crosby), Connor (McDavid), Nate (MacKinnon). But there’s a lot of other guys that, when things aren’t going well, that list grows, I would say. Things aren’t going well, so the list couldn’t be where, ‘No, we could never ever consider that.’ What I want to make sure you guys know, we’re not selling $.50 cents on the dollar out of anger.”
All options on the table could include the core group that’s signed to long-term contracts, but it’s more tricky there since those players hold full no-trade clauses and lengthy term.
“Yeah, well, obviously there’s expectations for every different level, whether it’s your mid-age or older,” Armstrong said. “Starting with management, no one has reached their expectations this year. So, again, I’m not trying to threaten anyone, but there’s really nothing we can’t say, ‘We can’t consider that.’ There hasn’t been enough over an extended period of time that says (the Blues are trending upward), but again, not at $.50 cents on the dollar.”
But with the position the Blues are in, teams are naturally calling, and as Armstrong said, they’d be nuts to not listen.
“Yeah, like the NHL as we know it, we work on deadline and artificial deadlines,” Armstrong said. “We have an artificial deadline Dec. 19, the trade freeze. Again, I’m just using my own experiences, when you’re a high-functioning team, this gives you a reason to call a low-functioning team to set the table for when you’re actually going to do it. So yeah, teams are starting to kick tires and starting to ask where we’re at, and we’re saying, ‘We’re certainly not pleased with where we’re at. What are your ideas?’ If it made sense today, we would do it today, but a lot of it is, ‘Well, I’m not there yet, but keep me in the loop.’ That artificial deadline will go away on Dec. 19 and we’ll put the next artificial deadline, which will likely be a little bit before the Olympics, and then the real deadline will come in in March.”
And a lot of that will be predicated on who the Blues currently are, and they are the team that’s allowed the most goals in the league (123), has worst goal differential (minus-37) and has lost 12 of its 15 regulation games by three goals or more.
Not ideal.
“Yeah, but those are facts, and I live in the fact world, and those are facts and that’s that stabilization thing I was talking about not letting one turn into three, keeping it … not looking for offense when it’s not there to create bad opportunities for our goaltenders and let the scores get out of whack,” Armstrong said. “It’s very humbling when I look at the standings now and look at what collectively I thought we were going to be at and where we’re at. In cold hard facts, it’s extremely humbling.”
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