St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong was predictably quiet at Friday's NHL trade deadline. (Jeff Curry-Imagn Images) [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/a54be636-56d4-44d1-90ca-9d05e4917e6f.jpeg] St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong was predictably quiet at Friday's NHL trade deadline. (Jeff Curry-Imagn Images) The whispers were evident and obviously clear. The NHL Trade Deadline of 2025 came and went for the St. Louis Blues, and they were neither buyers nor sellers. On a day when Mikko Rantanen headlined getting traded (again!) to the Dallas Stars, the Blues stood pat. St. Louis (30-27-6), which was two points behind the Calgary Flames for the second wild card in the Western Conference heading into Friday's game against the Anaheim Ducks, has just 19 games remaining and the message: see what this current group that's on a 6-1-1 run can do. "We had talked to teams obviously over the last couple of weeks," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said via Zoom on Friday. "Coming out of the 4 Nations event, we were very active in seeing in what we could do. As our team started to progress, not a holding pattern but they kept playing better. We wanted to wait and see how they did and they got through that last game and the last couple days. "We were in contact with some teams on some hockey trades. You look at a lot of the deals that are done at this year are for unrestricted free agents. We had a couple of those in [Radek] Faksa and [Ryan] Suter, but we didn't have some of the prime time deals that were made for guys for multiple assets were UFAs and we didn't have that style of player this year. At the end of the day, we talked to a lot of people, we (strung) around a lot of ideas, but we weren't involved in anything that made sense for us. The last couple of years, those depth UFA signings of players, there's not a lot of movement in that. We saw that last year in our group and we saw it again this year with our group, so at the end of the day, we ended up moving forward with the team that's playing excellent hockey right now." This was the thought process for the Blues as they started playing their best hockey of the season when they most recently strung together their longest winning streak at four games. It simply didn't do enough to deter the thought process of management to alter things. "Not really. It's still an uphill battle," Armstrong said. "We do the analytical equation of where we're at. I think if the eighth place team stays in its winning percentage, we have to play around .650 hockey to just tie or get one point ahead of them, which is a tall task. We weren't looking to use assets that we've acquired over the last couple of years, young players for a stop gap. Anything we would have done would have been more of a hockey trade and we didn't see a lot of those happening today that we could be involved in. We weren't looking for a Band-Aid this year." And that thought process stayed that way even in light of losing their top defenseman, Colton Parayko on Wednesday for up to six weeks with a left knee injury. [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/st-louis-blues/latest-news/blues-get-devastating-injury-news-on-top-defenseman-in-playoff-push] "Not really. If Colton was healthy, we still weren't going to move one of our 'A' prospects or one of our first-round picks or anything like that in one of these deadline trades for this year," Armstrong said. "... It's an uphill battle with Colton, it's an even more uphill battle without him. When you go to bed, you say, 'Should we look at moving other guys out?' But at the end of the day, we talked about a whole host of things, but we just felt that what we could do, we weren't comfortable doing. And what we were comfortable doing, other teams weren't comfortable doing. We're here where we are today and we are excited for that though." Armstrong wouldn't commit to saying whether he would have tried to supply the Blues with assets leading into the deadline had this current run of play happened sooner, and more frequent, but it's obvious that it was needed. "I give the guys a ton of credit. Coming out of that break, I think I said it after the break (that) the players tell us what we're supposed to do, and to their credit, they've really played fantastic hockey right now," Armstrong said. "There's a difference that we talk about internally. Sometimes we outscore teams. You can win the game or outscore somebody, and right now, we're winning games. We're beating them on the scoreboard, we're also beating them at the underlying stats, and that's something that we haven't done for a while and I'm really proud of the job that 'Monty' and his staff have done, but ultimately it's the players that do those things. They're doing a really good job right now. "We got some difficult news with Parayko the other day, quietly having a Norris Trophy-type of season. He wasn't going to gain enough offensive points to be a finalist in that award because that's how it's voted on by the voters. Who has the most points gets the Norris Trophy, but who has the biggest impact on a team defensively, Colton Parayko is in that category for sure. So we're going to miss him, but I'm very excited for the players because they've done a nice job from our younger players taking charge and being a big part of it to our older players like [Cam] Fowler and Parayko and I think [Justin] Faulk is back to playing really good hockey. [Brayden] Schenn has played well since Monty's been here. Now I see Robert Thomas and 'Buch' [Pavel Buchnevich] are back together. It gives some hope moving forward. "One of the things that was frustrating is that we could never get five or six of our top six players playing well at the same time. We went through a stretch where Schenn's group was leading us and then Thomas and Buch's group was leading us. Right now they're all playing really well and that's exciting because we do believe that they can continue to push us and they can continue to push us and they have the opportunity now. It's an uphill battle. I'm not naive to think it's not an uphill battle, certainly with Colton's situation, but I hope they have as much excitement in this as our fans do about what they've accomplished and what we hope they can accomplish by pushing and playing meaningful games and staying on task and not getting frustrated and just staying to what they've done in the last couple of weeks." Armstrong is, and historically has been, keen on making hockey-type trades, ones that are more difficult to assemble at the deadline but more apt to doing so in the off-season. Doing such deals now were not possible with a number of the veterans still holding the cards with full no-trade clauses that will fall off starting July 1, giving the organization more flexibility to change the shape of the roster then. "Sure does," Armstrong said. "Obviously when you negotiate with unrestricted free agent, there's a give-and-take on all different things from no-movement clauses to no-trade clauses to signing bonuses. The ones that we do have an expiration date on the full no-trades and we're getting into that window on some of our veteran players. And it does open the door if we decide to do certain things with less restrictions." One of those players with a full NTC that will fall into a modified MTC is captain Brayden Schenn, who was one of the hottest commodities all over the rumor mills, but the 33-year-old expressed his desire to stay in St. Louis recently and Armstrong wouldn't comment on what how those events played out. "I'm just not comfortable talking about any individual negotiation with a team or with a player," Armstrong said. "It's not something we've done in the past and it's not something I'm comfortable getting into individual players like that." So for those upset and/or disappointed that the Blues weren't buyers, like most fan bases want their teams to be each year, the pros and cons were weighed and in the end, if you're not a Stanley Cup contender, the Blues weren't going to risk losing multiple assets for that quick fix even though the range of motions were up and down. "It gives you pause," Armstrong said. "It gives you pause when you're playing poorly. "I was over in Europe before the break. We weren't playing great hockey. What we talked about earlier is we outscored Chicago (on Feb. 8, 6-5 shootout win). I don't think we beat them the game before (the 4 Nations break). I was up at 4 in the morning and I'm watching the game over there and you're happy that you won, but you don't sleep well knowing that you (didn't) play well. And I haven't had that feeling since then. We came out and unfortunately our game one (vs. Winnipeg), I thought we played a very good game, gave up a late goal to lose a point and lost in (a shootout). I felt way better about that loss to Winnipeg than I did about that win against Chicago, and the guys have just built on that every game. Even the Dallas game (last Sunday, a 6-3 loss), we can spend until the next trade deadline about our penalty kill if we want; it's not very good. But that 5-on-5 game against Dallas I thought was very good. The guys felt that too and they built off that and they took it in on the next night and won. The guys are giving us hope and belief. I think Jim has done a great job. I think they're starting to understand that Jim the head coach is different than Jim the assistant coach and they're starting to respond to the understanding that his demeanor changes with his job title changing here in St. Louis, and we're the benefactor of that."
