Just six days old, Julia Grace Pietrangelo could be heard cooing.
“Yeah, she’s laying on my belly right now,” Blues defensemen Alex Pietrangelo, now a father of four, said Friday night. “Everything kind of gets put into perspective when you have your newborn baby laying on your chest and she’s making these cute sounds. I don’t think you really think about anything else.
“You realize what really matters — your priorities — and there’s no better feeling. You can kind of escape the world when you have a newborn and your kids. I’m obviously a big family guy, so it’s a nice little break from everything that’s going on right now when you can see this bundle of joy that I’ve got in my arms.”
The captain spoke in a soothing voice, as not to disturb his newborn daughter, but his words were serious. He will become an unrestricted free agent on Oct. 9, and with only two weeks to go, there has been no progress with the Blues on an extension. In fact, Pietrangelo confirmed to The Athletic what TSN’s Darren Dreger first reported Friday, that the Blues and his agent, Don Meehan of Newport Sports Management Inc., have broken off talks and that he’s headed to the market.
“There was a discussion today, and I guess the best way to sum it up, we haven’t really made much progress,” Pietrangelo said in an exclusive interview. “We just think right now, with where things are at, that maybe it’s best for both sides to see what’s going on in free agency, what the team can explore, what I can explore and if there are better fits for each side.
“We’re a little disappointed that we’re in this situation. We weren’t able to hammer out the details what we wanted in a deal. There was some work that we tried to get done that we couldn’t get done, so both sides agreed that maybe it’s in the best interest. We’re two weeks away. Not saying anything can’t change, but as of right now, that’s kind of our plan, and we’ll see where things go.”
Here’s what appears to the hang-up: Sources have said that a recent Blues offer had an annual average value (AAV) of around $7.7 million, though it’s now believed to be in the neighborhood of $8 million. While Pietrangelo is willing to accept less than market value, which could be as much as $9 million, sources say he’s unwilling to continue negotiations because the Blues have yet to agree to the structure of the deal.
So what does that mean?
Well, according to sources, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong and Meehan have discussed various term lengths — five, six, seven and eight years — but there are other forms of structure. One form is believed to be a no-movement clause, which the Blues have none of on their roster and which Armstrong has been vehemently opposed to giving out in the past. Another is believed to be a signing bonus in Year 7 or 8 of a long-term deal, which would give Pietrangelo some protection by guaranteeing him a cash payout in the event of a buyout.
Asked about the Blues’ offer and the specific structure in the deal, Pietrangelo said, “You can talk about money all you want and dollars, but there’s more to a contract than the actual number, and there’s a lot that goes into the discussion of how you want a contract to be done. I’m not going to confirm or deny any numbers; it’s just we clearly weren’t able to get to a number that we thought was appropriate on both sides.”
How did we get to this point? A little over a year ago, Pietrangelo became the first player in Blues history to hoist the Stanley Cup when the Blues beat the Boston Bruins in Game 7 on June 12, 2019.
Sources have said that Pietrangelo’s camp approached the Blues about a contract extension shortly after the Stanley Cup win, before the start of the 2019-20 season. But with the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement set to expire and the salary cap not yet known for 2020-21, Armstrong preferred to wait until there was some more certainty.
“Yeah, that’s the gist of it,” Pietrangelo said. “He just wanted to see where things were going to go in terms of the CBA.”
But just three months later, on Sept. 24, many months before the COVID-19 pandemic would produce a new CBA and it would be known that the salary cap would stay at $81.5 million, the Blues traded and extended the contract of defenseman Justin Faulk with a seven-year, $45.5 million. That was followed by an eight-year, $52 million extension for Brayden Schenn on Oct. 4.
Sources have acknowledged that the Blues traded for Faulk to both bolster their defense and also provide a backup plan in case Pietrangelo left for free agency. But two things happened in the process: The captain was irked, according to those close to him, and the club chewed away at its future cap space; with Faulk’s $6.5 million AAV on the books, the Blues have just $5.2 million available.
Pietrangelo denies that the Faulk trade and signing affected him, but he conceded that it surprised him.
“The Faulker one, if it really bothered me, I wouldn’t have been able to play this year, and I wouldn’t have become friends with Faulker,” he said. “It doesn’t really bother me. (Armstrong) had to do what he had to do to make the team better. … He’s got a job to do.
“Upset about it? No. Just surprised because we tried to get a deal done and it didn’t work. But it doesn’t mean that the player and the team can’t do what they think is going to be in their best interest. No, I’m not upset about it. I’ve never once said that.”
Nonetheless, negotiations between the Blues and Pietrangelo never went very far before the pandemic, and they didn’t pick up again until after the club was ousted in the first round of the NHL playoffs by the Vancouver Canucks.
“There wasn’t much going on, just some casual conversations,” Pietrangelo said. “Things picked up after the bubble with us being done and didn’t really gain any traction on either side.”
Pietrangelo can only wonder whether the Blues would be offering more if the NHL hadn’t shut down, leading to lost revenue for the league.
“Maybe Doug and (Blues owner Tom Stillman) had a different opinion if there wasn’t a pandemic and the cap went up $5 million,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ll never know. It’s easy to say, but it happened, and that’s life, and maybe something will change.”
Some close to Pietrangelo believe that he is taking the negotiations with Armstrong personally. They cite several spats between the captain and the GM over the years, and one source even suggested that Pietrangelo should consider having direct communication with Stillman to resolve the contract situation.
“People disagree all the time,” said Pietrangelo, who acknowledged the disagreements but said they’ve been hockey-related, not contract-related. “You can say Doug and I don’t agree, but we still guided our team to a championship. Sometimes those uncomfortable situations that happen, they make you better because it gives you a little bit more clarity of where a person stands. Sometimes that’s kind of how we need to go about our business and be direct. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the relationship is completely gone. Those things happen, and I’m sure it happens everywhere else.”
Others believe that Armstrong’s distaste for negotiating with Newport is the issue. If Pietrangelo were not with that agency, they say, he and the Blues might be able to work out a deal. That’s not expected to happen.
“Look, my lawyers know way more about this than I do,” Pietrangelo said. “I might think I know what I’m talking about, but when you really sit down with them and they do their homework and they present to you what they think, it’s really impressive what they came up with. So there’s a reason why I’ve retained them and I trust them. They’ve done a great job.”
So with two weeks to go, the stalemate continues.
“It’s been over a year that we’ve been trying to hammer out a deal, so I think both sides are kind of at the point where maybe there’s a better way to go about this,” Pietrangelo said. “The goal all along was to stay here. I think Army’s goal all along was to get me signed. It’s not like all of a sudden we’re just like, ‘You know what, this isn’t going to work.’ There’s a lot of things that both sides feel like they can do to make the team better, and things that I felt like I can do for myself, and sometimes these things don’t work out the way that you were thinking.”
Few, if any, could have envisioned this scenario after the Blues’ historic 2019 season.
“I think that’s probably the most disappointing part, that we’re in this position after coming off the Stanley Cup win,” Pietrangelo said. “I think (his wife) Jayne and I have been nothing but great to the city, and obviously the organization and the city mean a lot to us. We’ve gained a lot of friends within the organization, and we obviously have a huge attachment to the community, with Jayne being from here and family and friends.
“Yeah, it’s disappointing. You spend your whole career somewhere, and to have a situation where you go through this, the reality kind of hits that there’s a chance you’re going to be wearing a different jersey one day. It’s kind of a tough pill to swallow when you have your heart somewhere. But again, this isn’t a blame game on either side. Both sides have their own opinions, and sometimes things just don’t work out.”
Pietrangelo believes that many overplayed the notion that he will remain a Blue because his wife is from St. Louis and they now have four children who they won’t want to uproot.
“Yep,” he said. “I think maybe people thought that we’d be willing to do what we had to do to keep the family here. But I’ve always said I’ve got a strong wife and she keeps me going in the right direction. I’m lucky that she and I can go through this thing together because she’s been nothing but supportive.
“We sat down and did our homework on our own and have gone through scenarios, teams that we think can maybe accommodate us and teams that we think are competitive and teams that we think would be willing to raise a family in. It’s not a very fun thing to do when your heart is somewhere, but unfortunately, it’s just the situation we’re in.”
As disappointing and dark as that sounds, Pietrangelo hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning to the Blues.
“No, I never will,” he said. “I’ve never once said that I’m ruling the Blues out. I’ve never said that. I don’t think you really move on. Whether you’ve played 12 years in a city or one year in a city, I don’t think you really move on until it’s pen to paper and you’re going somewhere else. I truly don’t believe that, because it’s not official until then. So maybe it’s in our best interest to see what other opportunities we can have, and maybe Doug has felt the same way, but it doesn’t mean that something can’t happen.”
So if Oct. 9 rolls around and Pietrangelo hasn’t re-signed with the Blues, does that mean he’s gone?
“I have no idea,” he said. “This is my first time doing this. Who knows? Maybe I have a change of heart, right? You never know.”
At this point, Pietrangelo can’t even put a percentage on it.
“I can’t give you that,” he said. “If you would have asked me for a number a week ago, that would be a different number than I would have had this morning. Honestly, who knows? I don’t know what this process is like. I don’t know what it’s like to hear from other teams. I don’t know what Doug is going to do. I’m just going to wait and enjoy my two weeks with my family and my newborn, and we’ll just kind of see what happens in a couple weeks.”
