Blues 2024 Off-Season Trade Proposals Thread

[LGB]

I hope we're really cautious with contracts we give out this offseason. We don't want to handcuff ourselves 2-3 years down the line when we have the young talent to build a really deep roster.

 

[TheDizee]

I hope we're really cautious with contracts we give out this offseason. We don't want to handcuff ourselves 2-3 years down the line when we have the young talent to build a really deep roster.

which is why we should have fully commit to a rebuild which means dealing people like buch and faulk for future assets. instead, we did NOTHING and our reward will be the 16th pick.

 

[bleedblue1223]

I think for me, the ideal summer would be moving Buchnevich at the draft for a bunch of assets, hopefully in route to acquiring a prospect with top pair potential, either an existing prospect/young player or moving up in the draft through a couple different moves. Then use the cap space that we already had and opened up with the Buch trade to replace Buch and upgrade the 2nd line.

If we can move Krug, that would truly be ideal, but I'll be a bit more realistic.

 

[Majorityof1]

I feel similar. I wouldn't hate a scenario where we get a solid middle 6 upgrade, ideally #2 C, and then someone like OEL on a short-term deal to play on the offensive top 4 pair. Leddy/Parayko and OEL/Faulk, with Perunovich or Krug with Kessel. Defense is still far from fixed, but it's improved.

I don't think its much of an imorovement since its the same problem of needing to shelter all our LD.

Scandella was cooked but he at least knew what the D in Dman stands for. Krug, OEL and Perunovich have no clue.

No thank you on OEL unless it's super short term. I'd rather have empty cap to make a move if something comes up. I'd prefer a stronger defensive player.

 

[Brian39]

No thank you on OEL unless it's super short term. I'd rather have empty cap to make a move if something comes up. I'd prefer a stronger defensive player.

I'm genuinely curious to see what type of value he has around the league. I'm not quite sure that he has increased his value much or even at all.

He's their #5 D man and his production hasn't been a massive improvement from last season. He's at a nearly identical points pace, with goals going up and assists going down. He's still giving the puck away much more than he's taking it away and his usage is much more sheltered than it was in Vancouver.

He's shown me that he can be an effective 'offensive 3rd pair' guy but he didn't do a ton to prove to me that he can be an effective 2nd pair D over the whole season. He took tons of (fair) criticism given the cap hit, but I think this year's contract $2.25M x 1 year was a fairly accurate assessment of the player he was/is. I wouldn't expect him to get noticeable money with any type of term attached this summer.

I'm not interested in him barring a large change to our defensive group over the summer, but I don't think we're talking about a guy who would need $4M x 3+ to sign. But I don't have a great read on his value.

 

[bleedblue1223]

It's also tough see what players like him or even better players like a Duchene or if Marchessault leaves, are these players that want to take a discount on a contender or try and get as much as they can while they still can? I could see OEL taking cheap deals to play that 3rd pair role on contenders while he's still good enough. Duchene and Marchessault are still genuinely good players, so they'll make good money wherever they go, but do they take some sort of a haircut to be in a good spot, or do they want to get a larger salary on a bubble team or non-playoff team?

 

[Blueston]

I'm genuinely curious to see what type of value he has around the league. I'm not quite sure that he has increased his value much or even at all.

He's their #5 D man and his production hasn't been a massive improvement from last season. He's at a nearly identical points pace, with goals going up and assists going down. He's still giving the puck away much more than he's taking it away and his usage is much more sheltered than it was in Vancouver.

He's shown me that he can be an effective 'offensive 3rd pair' guy but he didn't do a ton to prove to me that he can be an effective 2nd pair D over the whole season. He took tons of (fair) criticism given the cap hit, but I think this year's contract $2.25M x 1 year was a fairly accurate assessment of the player he was/is. I wouldn't expect him to get noticeable money with any type of term attached this summer.

I'm not interested in him barring a large change to our defensive group over the summer, but I don't think we're talking about a guy who would need $4M x 3+ to sign. But I don't have a great read on his value.

Why would we even want him? He doesn’t offer much now and surely isn’t going to be of much help when we are ready to contend. At this point he is just a plug, another guy like kapanen that we can pick up to serve as live body but we seem to have enough of them. We need d who are younger and better. I’m not interested in any free agent d unless hanifan decides that he wants to split difference between Vegas and east coast and wants to be a blue. We shouldn’t be seeking out anyone over 27.

 

[Brockon]

I'm genuinely curious to see what type of value he has around the league. I'm not quite sure that he has increased his value much or even at all.

He's their #5 D man and his production hasn't been a massive improvement from last season. He's at a nearly identical points pace, with goals going up and assists going down. He's still giving the puck away much more than he's taking it away and his usage is much more sheltered than it was in Vancouver.

He's shown me that he can be an effective 'offensive 3rd pair' guy but he didn't do a ton to prove to me that he can be an effective 2nd pair D over the whole season. He took tons of (fair) criticism given the cap hit, but I think this year's contract $2.25M x 1 year was a fairly accurate assessment of the player he was/is. I wouldn't expect him to get noticeable money with any type of term attached this summer.

I'm not interested in him barring a large change to our defensive group over the summer, but I don't think we're talking about a guy who would need $4M x 3+ to sign. But I don't have a great read on his value.

Before you sell OEL off as cooked, I suggest you take a longer look at his game logs. He filled the top pairing for Florida through October and part of November while both of Ekblad and Montour were recovering from off-season surgery.

Look at those numbers separately before/after Nov 17 and they tell a different story about his adequacy - maybe he can't fill in as that 1-3 D for a whole season, but there's recent evidence that he can play that role. FWIW the team record was 10-6 in that stretch (unsure about OT results).

The injury returns pushed him down their lineup, and I can't find who his partners were before/after. But, if you look at the ice time he played in the opening 5 weeks, that's not 3rd pairing minutes by anyone's definition.

Edit : tagging @Blueston

Edit 2: this is being done from my phone at the doctors office, as a follow up on my concussion which is still producing significant issues 3 weeks after the initial injury... I'm not doing a deep dive and my phone interface isn't the best for sharing detailed screenshots.

 

[Majorityof1]

Before you sell OEL off as cooked, I suggest you take a longer look at his game logs. He filled the top pairing for Florida through October and part of November while both of Ekblad and Montour were recovering from off-season surgery.

Look at those numbers separately before/after Nov 17 and they tell a different story about his adequacy - maybe he can't fill in as that 1-3 D for a whole season, but there's recent evidence that he can play that role. FWIW the team record was 10-6 in that stretch (unsure about OT results).

The injury returns pushed him down their lineup, and I can't find who his partners were before/after. But, if you look at the ice time he played in the opening 5 weeks, that's not 3rd pairing minutes by anyone's definition.

View attachment 848315

View attachment 848316

Edit : tagging @Blueston

Edit 2: this is being done from my phone at the doctors office.

When he wasn't in a sheltered role, he was paired with Forsling, who is a great D. Arguably as good as anyone we have or better. OEL noticeably hurt Forsling's stats. There is a noticeable drop in Forsling's stats with OEL than without. It's a 6 to 11 percent drop in CF%, SCF%, GF%, xGF% from being paired with OEL. Now that's to be expected putting a 3rd pairing D on the first pair. But let's not say he held his own. He was held up enough not to hurt the team too bad.

 

[Stealth JD]

I'd love to find a way to move both Krug and Faulk this year. I'm not particularly concerned that the Blues don't have in-house replacements to take their minutes; that's a problem for another day. I'd rather see the empty cap space than those two guys run back out there to eat $6.5M and f***ing up constantly. Calle Rosen can provide similar results for a fraction of the cost.

 

[Brockon]

When he wasn't in a sheltered role, he was paired with Forsling, who is a great D. Arguably as good as anyone we have or better. OEL noticeably hurt Forsling's stats. There is a noticeable drop in Forsling's stats with OEL than without. It's a 6 to 11 percent drop in CF%, SCF%, GF%, xGF% from being paired with OEL. Now that's to be expected putting a ton of 3rd pairing D on the first pair. But let's not say he held his own. He was held up enough not to hurt the team too bad.

Thanks for doing some of the digging for me. Trying to find anything concrete on my phone in the doc's office wasn't happening...

I didn't expect anyone to dig up stellar metrics in terms of OEL being a 1-3D. But, I certainly wanted any further discussion to reflect that he played significant minutes for 16 games that go far beyond what the 18:35 atoi stat for the whole season shows.

In that 16 game stretch OEL put up 4-6-10p and averaged ~23:32 toi per game. For context that would be #2 in atoi for us, behind CP55's 23:47 atoi per game this season.

I agree full heartedly that OEL isn't a guy you want in your top 4 these days in a perfect world. But, I think he'd probably perform better than Krug/Scandella in that LD2 slot. Moot point, as we're jammed up on the left without making trades signing OEL doesn't address our issues it would be compounding them.

My main point is that this big change in role isn't catalogued separately when looking at the season averages, so any discussion about OEL needs to reflect that different usage or at least have people dig a little deeper to contrast that first 5 weeks against the next several months playing behind Ekblad/Montour. And with Ekblad out again, not expected to play again before the playoffs - OEL played 22:14 April 6 against Boston in that game after Ekblad went down.

 

[BlueDream]

I'd love to find a way to move both Krug and Faulk this year. I'm not particularly concerned that the Blues don't have in-house replacements to take their minutes; that's a problem for another day. I'd rather see the empty cap space than those two guys run back out there to eat $6.5M and f***ing up constantly. Calle Rosen can provide similar results for a fraction of the cost.

This is where I’m at, too.

I don’t know who we can bring in as the solution(s) on defense, but that’s for Armstrong to figure out so I’m not even going to try.

At this point I just want a more watchable team and if we have all 3 of Krug, Faulk and Perunovich back in our lineup next season, I’m not going to be able to watch that team again. Krug competes hard but as his -34 rating just gets worse and worse, all you can do is laugh because it’s so pathetic. He has to go.

Faulk pissed me off this season too because even though he’s better than Krug, I can’t say that he at least competed hard every game this season. I don’t think he did. Hopefully that’s because he was injured because that’s the only acceptable reason.

 

[TK 421]

Krug? Faulk? Pick one but...

 

[TheDizee]

Krug? Faulk? Pick one but...

View attachment 848512

kyrou

 

[Xerloris]

which is why we should have fully commit to a rebuild which means dealing people like buch and faulk for future assets. instead, we did NOTHING and our reward will be the 16th pick.

kyrou

If you had paid any attention to the trade deadline this year and the returns players were getting then it was obviously in our best interest to hold Buch until next year because we would have thrown away our best trade asset for virtually trash. As for your irrational hatred of Kyrou I can only guess

 

[TK 421]

kyrou

I'm sorry Diz but I'm myopically focused on shuffling deck chairs on defense with an eye out for possible upgrades like Skjei, I don't even count wingers as actual people so the whole Kyrou thing doesn't even register for me. He has a punchable face though I'll give you that.

 

[joe galiba]

I'm sorry Diz but I'm myopically focused on shuffling deck chairs on defense with an eye out for possible upgrades like Skjei, I don't even count wingers as actual people so the whole Kyrou thing doesn't even register for me. He has a punchable face though I'll give you that.

come on now, my daughters are both about his age, they all look like that, you can't tempt me like that

 

[MissouriMook]

I was looking at the Sabres roster today and couldn't help but notice that they have four lefties (Dahlin, Power, Byram and Samuelsson) that could all play in the Top 4. Samuelsson is coming off shoulder surgery and has been hurt a lot in his young career, and Byram doesn't seem to be settling in particularly well there, so I wonder if one of them could be acquired given that Dahlin and Power are likely untouchable.

 

[bleedblue1223]

I was looking at the Sabres roster today and couldn't help but notice that they have four lefties (Dahlin, Power, Byram and Samuelsson) that could all play in the Top 4. Samuelsson is coming off shoulder surgery and has been hurt a lot in his young career, and Byram doesn't seem to be settling in particularly well there, so I wonder if one of them could be acquired given that Dahlin and Power are likely untouchable.

I think they eventually make a move, either by design or after they realize their plan will bow up in their face. They either got Byram to move one of the others or will be forced to because this group won't work.

 

[PocketNines]

Liut 151
Allen 148
Binnington 145

Probably three starts left this season and the Dallas game the Stars might not have any stakes and may rest guys

If the Blues trade him before he ends up #1 I will be pretty pissed, that would be such a Doug dog move

 

[Brockon]

I think they eventually make a move, either by design or after they realize their plan will bow up in their face. They either got Byram to move one of the others or will be forced to because this group won't work.

Well all of Dahlin, Power and Samuelsson are signed until 2030 or beyond. Only Dahlin has any trade protection in the near future (full NMC starting July 1 2025), Power has a M-NTC in 2029-2031.

Byram is an RFA next summer and the cheapest of the 4 at 3.85m.

Capfriendly lists them all as Left shot, LD/RD (except Samuelsson who is pure LD). Not sure if that's because they've all been forced to play their off-side this year due to the excess of LD in Buffalo or because they've all shown success playing either side before.

I think you're probably right that Byram gets moved, because Dahlin/Power is formidable duo to run for 45+ mins a night if you get them good partners (Samuelsson improved the Buffalo D metrics substantially IIRC, so unlikely to be moving him). I'm just not sure they move Byram before having a longer look than the 15 game sample size they have to go on currently.

And if they decide to move on from one of these blue chip young dmen - what are they targeting? UPL is solid. Their dcore is a strength in paper... Cozens/Thompson are Solid 2C or low end 1C. They have an excess of wingers.

On paper (no idea about actual line combos) looks decent - they just saw massive regression from both Thompson and Cozens from last year. Injuries had Quinn out for most of the season (23gp).

Skinner Thompson Peterka
Benson Cozens Quinn
Tuch Jost Greenway

I don't know what they add unless Buffalo is targeting veteran leadership, but who do you pay Byram type capital for that makes sense?

 

[Brian39]

Dahlin played on the right side before he was drafted and has played the best hockey of his NHL career on the right side. He's a left hand shot, but he is noticeably more comfortable on the right side. I think the Sabres would be crazy to try and slide him back to the left or to get rid of a good left handed D man because Dahlin shoots left.

I think their issue is less about having too many lefties and more about their entire top 4 being very young guys who haven't fully rounded out the defensive side of their games. The Avs won the Cup with a young D group, but they still had a 27 year old Toews in the top 4 plus a 30 year old Manson and 33 year old EJ logging 17+ minutes a night. All 4 members of the Sabres top 4 are 23 and under, plus the #5 is just 24. The veteran in the group is 28 year old Connor Clifton (16:35 a night) and no one else on the blue line has played more than 15 minutes a night this year.

I think they are just asking way too much of young D with zero veteran leadership to play defense. They could absolutely use another RD, but I don't think that using Samuelsson as a good #5 D man is a problem. He's probably better suited for that role than the one he has been playing through his career so far. Maybe they have to move him eventually to make money work, but they feel years away from a bad cap crunch and can probably afford the luxury of a $4.5M #5 D man for a decent amount of time.

I think that they should be trying to add a true 2nd pair caliber RD rather than trying to swap one of the LD for one. Let Power-Dahlin grow into an elite top pair, give Byram a legit defensive 2nd pair RD so that he can focus on the offensive side, and then pair Samulesson with whichever RD seizes the 3rd pair role. Power should get there defensively and Byram doesn't need to improve a ton defensively if he's not being asked to do all the heavy lifting on his pair. Samulesson is a damn good bottom pair and PK1 shutdown guy.

 

[bleedblue1223]

It's that, but also the balance issue. At least Samuelsson and Power are signed cheap long-term for what their value will be, but to extend Byram and acquire a proper 2nd pair RD, it's going to be a pretty expensive defensive core, and I just don't see that happening. I expect them to try and force this young defensive core, as each of them are capable of playing 20+ minutes, so they won't see the need in getting another 20+ minute dman. I see it flopping in a similar way to Ottawa's.

 

[Blueston]

It's that, but also the balance issue. At least Samuelsson and Power are signed cheap long-term for what their value will be, but to extend Byram and acquire a proper 2nd pair RD, it's going to be a pretty expensive defensive core, and I just don't see that happening. I expect them to try and force this young defensive core, as each of them are capable of playing 20+ minutes, so they won't see the need in getting another 20+ minute dman. I see it flopping in a similar way to Ottawa's.

If they extend byram they almost have to deal power. they both see themselves as future #1s, having dahlen ahead in pecking order is 1 thing, as he could be one of top 5 or so d in the league. being behind the other seems like more than either will embrace. and if they do deal power, they should be able to pretty much name their price. is their anyone in our organization you would make off limits for him? maybe thomas?

 

[bleedblue1223]

If they extend byram they almost have to deal power. they both see themselves as future #1s, having dahlen ahead in pecking order is 1 thing, as he could be one of top 5 or so d in the league. being behind the other seems like more than either will embrace. and if they do deal power, they should be able to pretty much name their price. is their anyone in our organization you would make off limits for him? maybe thomas?

I do think it depends on what Byram gets, I don't think it's a guarantee that he gets anything insane. I could see a scenario where it's Samuelsson going.

It's also possible that Byram flops and he doesn't really change the equation for Buffalo at all.