As much as last year sucked, I think it’s worth emphasizing that it REALLY accelerated our retool. Not only were we bad enough to get high enough pick to select dvorsky (who is I think our top prospect), our crappiness yielded stenberg, dean, lindstein, pekarcik, a 2nd next year, and also vrana and kapanen (who can be flipped this coming season) for basically free bc of in season cap space from the trades. So we went from bottom 3rd prospect pool to maybe top 10 in one season. That is nice bit of work.
It really can't be stressed enough how much asset value we got by moving rentals. Adding three assets of 1st round value, an asset of 2nd round value, two assets of 3rd round value and Blais is a massive infusion of talent. That literally doubled the amount of 1st round talent in our pipeline (before factoring in the #10 overall we 'earned'). Given the way our rental players were performing and the narrative about how hesitant teams would be to move 1sts for this draft, that is a big accomplishment.
But honestly, I might find the way we set ourselves up for this season even more. Vrana at 50% retention for a 7th was fantastic. I'd put the Kap waivers claim closer to 'fine' but he is a decent player. Acquiring and extending Blais at $1M is another nice piece of business. $6.85M for 3 of your likely middle 6 forwards is a good price. If the team D gets fixed and we're competing, they wil contribute for relatively cheap. If we suck, we can flip them at the deadline with retention for more futures.
Army recognized the upcoming market extremely well. I don't see too many similar-caliber UFAs who will be obtainable for similar term/money. I haven't seen any giveaway players with as little risk (or price) as Vrana or Kap. Snagging a couple reclamation projects that can be flipped for futures if we suck at the deadline instead of waiting until summer was a shrewd move.
I'm genuinely excited about the future of the organization. There is still plenty of work left to do, but the response to the unexpected crash this year has been excellent so far. The mandate from ownership was clearly not to tank for years, so given that I think we've positioned ourselves perfectly for 2023/24.
We have a lot of offensive talent in the forward group. If we can manage to swap Krug for a legit LHD by camp, then I think we have a playoff team next year. It looks like all of Nashville, Chicago, Arizona, and Winnipeg will be doing a legit rebuild this year and Minnesota is in cap jail. The 3 seed in the Central is wide open to a flawed team. And while I like Colorado's moves to get Johanson for free and swap Newhook for Colton (and a pick), that center group is still well shy of what it was with Kadri/Compher in 2021/22 and I still don't see the Landeskog replacement. They should be an easy playoff team, but they aren't looking like a steamroller that will easily swat away any and all 1st round challengers. There is enough hope to make it worthwhile to spend money on Blues tickets this year.
But we might still suck even worse than a couple other Central teams that suck. And if we do, Vrana, Blais, Kap, and Scandella are all assets that should fetch some value at the deadline if we decide to move them.
We've given ourselves quite a bit of time and flexibility to make big, long-term important decisions while still giving the coaching staff enough talent to prove that they are the guys to implement a successful NHL system. We still have a lot of work to do, but a lot of work has been done to set up an important season.
Now keep shopping Krug and if there's no takers then use the threat of waivers.
