Besides the center position. Do you honestly believe the team we have right now is good enough to win the cup this year. Because after this year it's basically going to come down to either keeping Shatty or Backes. With Allen's emergence, he's going to be getting a little more money as well as Schwartz. I know we have guys like Ott, Gunnar, and Berglund coming off the books relatively soon but we will still lose a quality player for nothing it seems and then the team will be even worse than it is now. Now after Shatty has came back and been so important to our offense, I'm even more wary than I was to trade him. But where does that leave our team for the future?
I think the talent level (if healthy) is high enough to have a reasonable shot, but I don't have any faith in the system/philosophy.
The Blues have almost $16 million in pending UFA contracts coming off the books at the end of this year. That list includes Backes, Brouwer, Ott, Brodziak, Upshall, Gomez, and Gunnarsson. It doesn't include Butler or anyone else not currently on the active NHL roster.
The current rumblings are that the salary cap will rise by about $3 million this offseason, so that brings us to about $19 million to work with...perhaps as much as $22.7 million if they move on from Berglund in the offseason.
Our only RFAs to be re-signed are Schwartz, Jaskin, Paajarvi, and Edmundson. The only one getting a really significant raise will be Schwartz. It should take no more than $6 million to cover all their raises.
That leaves us with $16.7 million to play with and the following 18 roster positions in place:
C: Stastny, Lehtera
RW: Tarasenko, Fabbri, Jaskin, Reaves
LW: Schwartz, Steen, Paajarvi
RD: Pietrangelo, Shattenkirk, Parayko, Bortuzzo
LD: Bouwmeester, Edmundson, Lindbohm
G: Allen, Elliott
If you add Berglund in there as either a LWer or a center, that takes us to $13 million left and only 4 roster positions left to fill. Let's add Sobotka to the mix as well, leaving us with $10.3 million left and 3 roster spots left to fill.
Schwartz - Stastny - Tarasenko
Steen - X - Fabbri
Berglund - Lehtera - Jaskin
Paajarvi - Sobotka - Reaves
X - X
Bouwmeester - Pietrangelo
X - Shattenkirk
Edmundson - Parayko
Lindbohm, Bortuzzo
Allen
Elliott
Rattie probably fills one of the depth forward spots. The other goes to someone for $700k or so.
The second pairing LD slot has multiple internal candidates (Edmundson, Lindbohm, or perhaps even Shattenkirk/Parayko). If one of them wins out, we fill that last depth slot with a Butler level type for cheap.
If that happens, we have about $8 million to play with for that last center position even without ditching Berglund.
The year after that we have another $20 million coming off the books (Steen, Shattenkirk, Sobotka, Bortuzzo, Berglund, and Elliott), and perhaps additional funds from another raise in the cap, plus whatever extra space we didn't spend to the previous year. Parayko and Allen are the only significant RFAs to re-sign.
Even if you give $7 million to Shattenkirk and $6 million in combined raises to Allen and Parayko, you still have at least $7 million left to play around with for Steen (or his replacement), a bottom 6 center, a depth defenseman, a backup goaltender, etc. Some of those will likely be filled internally (like Binnington or Copley, and possibly Barbashev), leaving even more available for the difference makers.
The Blues have plenty of financial flexibility moving forward. They can spend big this offseason on a center if they want and easily keep their core players moving forward. Maybe not $10 million big, but pretty big.