Yeah, it is true - and I'll keep repeating it
because it's true.
He was around the team in 2021 - which, fine, there wasn't an AHL season, he was effectively one of the allowable non-roster players. He played
12 games in the AHL at the start of 2021-22 and was 2-18-20, which apparently was all the seasoning he needed to be ready for the NHL. He came up, played 19 games and put up an incredible 6 assists - half on the power play - and people went f***ing gaga over him. Got hurt, had to rehab, got assigned to Springfield, played
5 more games there, then got recalled for the playoffs where he had 4 assists (3 on the power play) as the Blues tried desperately to shelter him at even strength because his defense sucked ass.
He would have absolutely 2022-23 with the Blues if not for the broken shoulder, because Scandella was out with the hip injury. Never mind his defense still sucked ass, he would have had to put in a horrific training camp to
not be on the roster despite his already glaring defensive woefulness.
He's never had to [
Smith Barney voice]
earn [/Smith Barney voice] his NHL roster spot. He's always had one handed to him, either through minimal achievement or circumstance.
This alone underscores that you're not making the point you think you are.
Given that he got on the roster after
12 AHL games, and after another injury that caused him to miss 2 months because "we had multiple D injuries at once and were all hands on deck trying to win a playoff round," and would have definitely been here for 2022-23 if not injured (unless you want to create a fiction where he's playing in Springfield all season long), and that he's here now for fear of waivers, ... that's looking a whole lot more like "repeatedly gifted an NHL roster spot" than it is "went out, demonstrated the ability to play the position at even a semi-NHL caliber level, earned his position."
YMMV.
Everyone also knows that when you haven't been healthy and you've barely played pro games,
maybe the way to acclimate to the pro game - especially when you have serious deficiencies to the defensive side of your game and you're a defenseman - might be to play a bunch of games a level below the NHL and get your shit together there, not play 20 games and put up a bunch of points and call it mission accomplished and then come up to the NHL and get exposed repeatedly by your ignorance to the pace of the NHL game where all your defensive deficiencies are much more certain to get exposed and exposed badly.
Unless we're
that desperate to win that we'll eschew long-term development, in which case it's a damning indictment of the GM.
So what? Is Perunovich
that special that someone else was going to claim him on waivers? People freak out over guys going on waivers, like 80% of those guys are so special multiple teams are ready to pounce on the guy for free the moment he becomes available ... and 90% of
those guys clear waivers without a problem, and most of the rest later become someone else's waiver fodder.
Say Perunovich goes on waivers. Anyone who's done their homework has seen what he is; if they still think he's better than someone on their roster, ... OK, good luck. If they didn't do their homework, then they think they can make something out of him - and if (when) he doesn't get his shit together defensively, gets beaten more often than Christina Crawford, and that team realizes
shit, he really isn't as good as we thought they're going to waive him as well - and then we claim him (or wait for anyone else who first submitted an unsuccessful claim to claim him and also waive him) and then send him down to Springfield with instructions,
get your goddamn shit together defensively.
Seriously, this is like all the angst over I-don't-know-how-many guys who've been waiver-eligible and people get virtually nauseous thinking about losing them on waivers because
he's got talent, maybe he'll finally realize it no matter how often they watch him f*** up and underplay that supposed talent. It's even more humorous watching you have gone into detail 4 months and change ago about how bad defensively he was, knowing nothing has changed on that, and here you are today defending keeping him as if we've got some truly valuable, irreplaceable player when in reality he's a (much) lesser version of Andy Delmore.