What would you do if you were GM?

[CraftyVeteran]

Army put himself in a bad situation without any outs and it feels like it was on purpose. Let's spend up to the cap on inflated contracts after getting rid of a SC core and also give those albatross contracts nobody deserves NTCs. I just can't.....

 

[Brian39]

Army put himself in a bad situation without any outs and it feels like it was on purpose. Let's spend up to the cap on inflated contracts after getting rid of a SC core and also give those albatross contracts nobody deserves NTCs. I just can't.....

I think this is a pretty disingenuous way to describe what happened.

I think that the 'core' of the 2019 Cup was ROR, Petro, Binner, Parayko, J-Bo, Tarasenko, Schwartz, Perron, and Schenn. Every other skater played under 17 minutes a night in the playoffs in 2019 and that group comprised our #1 goalie, the top 2 centers, the top 3 D, and the 3 best wingers. Throw in Berube as the Cup-winning coach if you want.

Every player in that group returned the following season and Schenn's extension was given to him before the 2019/20 season began. Faulk was brought in and extended before that season began as well.

J-Bo suffered a completely unpredictable career-ending medical event in 2020 and Petro left in free agency in 2020.

Krug was signed in the 2020 offseason. At the time he was signed, all of ROR, Binner, Parayko, Tarasenko, Schenn, Schwartz, and Perron were still on the roster. That's 7 of 9 guys from the Cup core plus the coach who were still here. Many of the support players from the Cup run (Thomas, Bozak, Barby, Sunny, Sanford, Dunn, and Bortz) were still present on the roster. All told, 14 guys who played 15+ games for us in the 2019 playoffs were still on the roster for the 2020/21 season after all of the Schenn, Faulk, and Krug's contracts were given out.

Binner was given his extension during the 2020/21 season.

Dunn was selected in the expansion draft and Schwartz left in free agency in 2021 offseason.

We traded for and signed Buch just before the start of free agency in 2021 and signed Saad at the opening of free agency in 2021. Then we extended Parayko a few months later. We had a great record in 2021/22 and brought in Leddy at the deadline. On the opening day of free agency in the summer of 2022, Leddy was extended and Perron walked as a UFA. Kyrou and Thomas were extended prior to the start of the 2022/23 season.

That accounts for every full NTC and $4M+ contract on the roster today.

It was after all of those signings that we moved on from ROR, Tarasenko, Barby, and Berube.

I fully agree that mistakes have been made. There was a cascading series of events on the blueline and bad contracts given out. But it is not true that we dismantled the core and then gave out those contracts. We kept a lot of the core around for years and all of those contracts were given out to supplement the remaining core with good players in a win-now window. We didn't win again, the window closed, and now we are left with some ugly contracts. But they were all given out when a good amount of 'core guys' were still here (and a few non-2019-core players became damn good players on our roster).

 

[PocketNines]

The argument implies 7 of 9 is almost the whole thing. The one that wasn't there was dramatically more important than most of those other guys. Subtracting a true #1 D like it's a luxury, you are instantly done contending. Not having one in the system as a backup when you do this puts you on indefinite standby which is where this franchise is.

So whether 7 of 9 were still here there could be no reasonable contending expectations. I returned to the site and and stated this and just got blasted for it and a whole litany about how Torey Krug really was a #3 on a contender, so this wasn't as catastrophic as I was saying it was. But of course it was as catastrophic as I was saying it was. We just had to wait for a lot of people to come around and stop arguing Krug was a great #3 D and how that supplies a significant percentage of what was subtracted, which mercifully, people have finally stopped doing.

So all these what would you do if you were the GM questions, they need a support beam for the entire franchise and it has to be the overriding headline focus.

 

[Majorityof1]

I think this is a pretty disingenuous way to describe what happened.

I think that the 'core' of the 2019 Cup was ROR, Petro, Binner, Parayko, J-Bo, Tarasenko, Schwartz, Perron, and Schenn. Every other skater played under 17 minutes a night in the playoffs in 2019 and that group comprised our #1 goalie, the top 2 centers, the top 3 D, and the 3 best wingers. Throw in Berube as the Cup-winning coach if you want.

Every player in that group returned the following season and Schenn's extension was given to him before the 2019/20 season began. Faulk was brought in and extended before that season began as well.

J-Bo suffered a completely unpredictable career-ending medical event in 2020 and Petro left in free agency in 2020.

Krug was signed in the 2020 offseason. At the time he was signed, all of ROR, Binner, Parayko, Tarasenko, Schenn, Schwartz, and Perron were still on the roster. That's 7 of 9 guys from the Cup core plus the coach who were still here. Many of the support players from the Cup run (Thomas, Bozak, Barby, Sunny, Sanford, Dunn, and Bortz) were still present on the roster. All told, 14 guys who played 15+ games for us in the 2019 playoffs were still on the roster for the 2020/21 season after all of the Schenn, Faulk, and Krug's contracts were given out.

Binner was given his extension during the 2020/21 season.

Dunn was selected in the expansion draft and Schwartz left in free agency in 2021 offseason.

We traded for and signed Buch just before the start of free agency in 2021 and signed Saad at the opening of free agency in 2021. Then we extended Parayko a few months later. We had a great record in 2021/22 and brought in Leddy at the deadline. On the opening day of free agency in the summer of 2022, Leddy was extended and Perron walked as a UFA. Kyrou and Thomas were extended prior to the start of the 2022/23 season.

That accounts for every full NTC and $4M+ contract on the roster today.

It was after all of those signings that we moved on from ROR, Tarasenko, Barby, and Berube.

I fully agree that mistakes have been made. There was a cascading series of events on the blueline and bad contracts given out. But it is not true that we dismantled the core and then gave out those contracts. We kept a lot of the core around for years and all of those contracts were given out to supplement the remaining core with good players in a win-now window. We didn't win again, the window closed, and now we are left with some ugly contracts. But they were all given out when a good amount of 'core guys' were still here (and a few non-2019-core players became damn good players on our roster).

What happened to our Cup team is eerily simlar to what happened to Dallas. They won the cup, made the finals the next year. Then Armstrong took the job and proceeded to ruin the team. After he was fired 6 or so years later, Dallas was so far in a hole they did not make the playoffs for 8 of the next 10 years

Armstrong is a good GM but has shown a struggle to move on from a championship roster to the next phase once before. Those mistakes that were made are firmly on him. Hopefully we don't have to wait for our Heiskenen to pull out if it.

 

[Brian39]

What happened to our Cup team is eerily simlar to what happened to Dallas. They won the cup, made the finals the next year. Then Armstrong took the job and proceeded to ruin the team. After he was fired 6 or so years later, Dallas was so far in a hole they did not make the playoffs for 8 of the next 10 years

Armstrong is a good GM but has shown a struggle to move on from a championship roster to the next phase once before. Those mistakes that were made are firmly on him. Hopefully we don't have to wait for our Heiskenen to pull out if it.

Oh yeah, the mistakes are firmly on Army and I'm not at all saying that everything done post-Cup was correct. I was one of the loudest 'do what it takes to keep Petro' voices for all of 2019/20 and I think that single mistake had disastrous consequences. J-Bo having to retire was also a blow. I firmly believe that we could have been much better in the 5 years post-Cup than what we turned out to be.

But 2 of the 3 'albatross' contracts on the books today were inked before those decisions were made entering a season where both Petro and J-Bo came to camp and we were looking to defend the Cup. We were the 2nd best team in the league when COVID put an abrupt end to the regular season. I don't see an argument that it was foolish to be prioritizing short term success this year and there is zero argument that we had gotten rid of a Cup core.

The 3rd such albatross contract was signed the literal day Petro officially left the organization and was a very obvious attempt to replace the offense that he brought from the blueline. Again, I've said hundreds of times that this was a massive mistake, but it is absolutely not fair to describe it as getting rid of a Cup core.

The Buch, Saad and Parayko contracts were all signed when we still had 3 of the 4 guys who received Conn Smythe votes in 2019 and the roster we constructed following their acquisitions/extensions led to a 109 point season. We brought in Leddy as a deadline acquisition that year too and were 1-1 in a playoff series with Colorado when Binner got injured. We gave Colorado a better fight than any team they faced that year (including the defending back-to-back champs) and many around here firmly believe that this series was a toss up or better if Binner doesn't get injured. Again, I find it incredibly disingenuous to act like there was just no reason to be extending core pieces or giving out fair-value deals to good players at this stage in our organization when we still had a large chunk of our Cup team.

We had a couple damn good seasons post-Cup while relying on a large portion of the Cup core. The bad contracts now are a direct result of that as those contracts were signed when we still justifiably viewed ourselves in a Cup window relying on a bunch of guys who got the job done for us in 2019. Acting like we moved on from that core and then signed a bunch of bad contracts for no reason isn't remotely accurate.

The issues were related to the choices made and the players that were prioritized, not a wholesale move-on from a Cup core.

 

[Xerloris]

Army put himself in a bad situation without any outs and it feels like it was on purpose. Let's spend up to the cap on inflated contracts after getting rid of a SC core and also give those albatross contracts nobody deserves NTCs. I just can't.....

Brian covered it but he was really nice about it. Largest contract in Blues history at the time and partial NMC wasn't enough? The dude WANTED to leave and was going to leave no matter what. If you believe the bullshit JR was spewing on behalf of Petro to be true then you're not as crafty as you think. Tarasenko requested a trade, ROR had an awful contract year, we got a haul for him and he didn't return? We don't even know if he wanted to. Acting like Armstrong dismantled the core is so damn f***ing stupid.

Oh yeah, the mistakes are firmly on Army and I'm not at all saying that everything done post-Cup was correct. I was one of the loudest 'do what it takes to keep Petro' voices for all of 2019/20 and I think that single mistake had disastrous consequences. J-Bo having to retire was also a blow. I firmly believe that we could have been much better in the 5 years post-Cup than what we turned out to be.

But 2 of the 3 'albatross' contracts on the books today were inked before those decisions were made entering a season where they both came to camp and we were looking to defend the Cup. We were the 2nd best team in the league when COVID put an abrupt end to the regular season. I don't see an argument that it was foolish to be prioritizing short term success this year and there is zero argument that we had gotten rid of a Cup core.

The 3rd such albatross contract was signed the literal day Petro officially left the organization and was a very obvious attempt to replace the offense that he brought from the blueline. Again, I've said hundreds of times that this was a massive mistake, but it is absolutely not fair to describe it as getting rid of a Cup core.

The Buch, Saad and Parayko contracts were all signed when we still had 3 of the 4 guys who received Conn Smythe votes in 2019 and the roster we constructed following their acquisitions/extensions led to a 109 point season. We brought in Leddy as a deadline acquisition that year too and were 1-1 in a playoff series with Colorado when Binner got injured. We gave Colorado a better fight than any team they faced that year (including the defending back-to-back champs) and many around here firmly believe that this series was a toss up or better if Binner doesn't get injured. Again, I find it incredibly disingenuous to act like there was just no reason to be extending core pieces or giving out fair-value deals to good players at this stage in our organization when we still had a large chunk of our Cup team.

We had a couple damn good seasons post-Cup while relying on a large portion of the Cup core. The bad contracts now are a direct result of that as those contracts were signed when we still justifiably viewed ourselves in a Cup window relying on a bunch of guys who got the job done for us in 2019. Acting like we moved on from that core and then signed a bunch of bad contracts for no reason isn't remotely accurate.

The issues were related to the choices made and the players that were prioritized, not a wholesale move-on from a Cup core.

I don't believe we have any albatross contracts. Sure, we may not like some of them but not a single one has stopped us from making moves or signing anyone. Maybe that was luck or maybe Armstrong knew we were about to suck so that's why the contracts were not full 7 years? Who knows.

 

[Louie the Blue]

What happened to our Cup team is eerily simlar to what happened to Dallas. They won the cup, made the finals the next year. Then Armstrong took the job and proceeded to ruin the team. After he was fired 6 or so years later, Dallas was so far in a hole they did not make the playoffs for 8 of the next 10 years

Armstrong is a good GM but has shown a struggle to move on from a championship roster to the next phase once before. Those mistakes that were made are firmly on him. Hopefully we don't have to wait for our Heiskenen to pull out if it.

Armstrong didn’t inherit the GM job in Dallas until 2+ years after they won the Cup and then they had 100+ points in 3 of his 4 full seasons at the helm (the other 2 seasons in which he started as GM they finished with 97 points).

If you want to argue that he didn’t leave Dallas in a good place, we can have that dialogue.

But he hasn’t made any long-term decisions that are detrimental to this franchise aside from Pietrangelo. The contracts are a natural price to pay for 2019. And none of them are really prohibitive from making improvements aside from Krug and possibly Schenn.

I’m fine with his current approach (paying the price for 2019 over the course of 3-4 seasons) vs hanging onto slim hopes like Pittsburgh, Washington, and Philadelphia are doing as well as not making the same mistakes the previous regime in SJ did (which impacts the long-term future of the team from 2019-present).

 

[Louie the Blue]

Also, as much as there is talk about the decisions made on defense, when Barbashev and Thomas are the only two guys drafted who can play a consistent top-6 defensive role as a forward while also contributing top-9 offensive production from 2014 onward in St. Louis (Bolduc, Neighbours, etc are TBD) is a problem. Part of that comes from unforeseen developments (Fabbri), other part comes from drafting no one that turned into anything as a result of picking late.

 

[BlueDream]

I don't believe we have any albatross contracts. Sure, we may not like some of them but not a single one has stopped us from making moves or signing anyone. Maybe that was luck or maybe Armstrong knew we were about to suck so that's why the contracts were not full 7 years? Who knows.

That’s not true at all. Krug quite literally did block a move last Summer.

And even beyond that, how can you say those contracts haven’t stopped us from making moves? We have no idea of potential deals the team has discussed. I’m very much willing to bet that there are many players we have been interested in, but we couldn’t bring them in because we couldn’t make the money work. We already know for a fact that Armstrong has had trouble moving the contracts of Krug and Scandella, and I’m sure there’s more that we don’t know about. He has constantly talked about how hard trades are these days because it has to be money in vs. money out. So yes, it absolutely has had an effect.

 

[Majorityof1]

Armstrong didn’t inherit the GM job in Dallas until 2+ years after they won the Cup and then they had 100+ points in 3 of his 4 full seasons at the helm (the other 2 seasons in which he started as GM they finished with 97 points).

If you want to argue that he didn’t leave Dallas in a good place, we can have that dialogue.

But he hasn’t made any long-term decisions that are detrimental to this franchise aside from Pietrangelo. The contracts are a natural price to pay for 2019. And none of them are really prohibitive from making improvements aside from Krug and possibly Schenn.

I’m fine with his current approach (paying the price for 2019 over the course of 3-4 seasons) vs hanging onto slim hopes like Pittsburgh, Washington, and Philadelphia are doing as well as not making the same mistakes the previous regime in SJ did (which impacts the long-term future of the team from 2019-present).

They won in 99, made the finals in 00, and made round 2 in 01. Armstrong took over in 01-02 season. They missed that year. He made the playoffs but lost in the first round for his whole time untill he was fired.

They then went to the finals again the year he was fired, IIRC on the backs of older players like Modano, zubov and Morrows last hurrah. But their cabinet was bare, and that was the teams last playoff for a bit. I am not complaining about the job he did as GM but the state of the team with a bare cabinet and over reliance on washed up players. Again, that is how I remember it. It was two decades ago though, so I could be mistaken

I disagree on not making mistakes aside from Pietrangelo. Trading for Faulk, signing Krug, letting Dunn go in the expansion draft, drafting all the players you have said are not good enough etc. He's done a lot of good things too. And I think he should get the benefit of more time to dig us out. But he definitely messed up in a lot of his choices to extend our competitive window.

 

[Louie the Blue]

They won in 99, made the finals in 00, and made round 2 in 01. Armstrong took over in 01-02 season. They missed that year. He made the playoffs but lost in the first round for his whole time untill he was fired.

They then went to the finals again the year he was fired, IIRC on the backs of older players like Modano, zubov and Morrows last hurrah. But their cabinet was bare, and that was the teams last playoff for a bit. I am not complaining about the jib he did as GM but the state of the team with a bare cabinet and over reluance if washed up players. Again, that is how I remember it. It was two decades ago though, so I could be mistaken

I disagree on not making mistakes aside from Pietrangelo. Trading for Faulk, signing Krug, letting Dunn go in the expansion draft, drafting all the players you have said are not good enough etc. He's done a lot of good things too. And I think he should get the benefit of more time to dig us out. But he definitely messed up in a lot of his choices to extend our competitive window.

He took over in January 2002, so I’m not sure that’s fair to place the result of the season him.

I acknowledge that the core he left was older, however, one of his prospects (Smith) was used to make an in-season trade for Richards.

What was the mistake for trading for Faulk? He gave up virtually no one that’s irreplaceable. I’d rather have Faulk over Edmundson.

Krug is getting paid to perform exactly how he’s been asked to perform. The issue that exacerbated his flaws is not having a replacement ready for Bouwmeester and panic extending and paying Scandella to play a role he shouldn’t be asked to do consistently. Krug is overpaid, but the defense’s issues have more to do than with just him.

Who would you have left unprotected? Yes, losing Dunn sucks, but he gambled he’d either get rid of Tarasenko’s cap hit for nothing or get a first for someone who didn’t want to be there. He ended up getting the latter.

 

[MissouriMook]

...

I disagree on not making mistakes aside from Pietrangelo. Trading for Faulk, signing Krug, letting Dunn go in the expansion draft, drafting all the players you have said are not good enough etc. He's done a lot of good things too. And I think he should get the benefit of more time to dig us out. But he definitely messed up in a lot of his choices to extend our competitive window.

It gets tiresome having to push back on the bolded over and over again, but here goes...

1. There was plausible information from sources inside the Blues locker room that Petro had already decided to move on. We saw it on the ice when he came off from his last shift. Everyone wants to blame the NMC as the reason he left, but you can't force a UFA to re-sign with your team in this or any sport. It sucks, we would have been better off keeping him, but not at any price (like a Karlsson-like number) with a full NMC.

2. The trade for Faulk was a win in a vacuum. We got the better player, for a longer period of time after the extension, and gave up very little to do so. It doesn't take much of a leap to understand that Army made the deal as a hedge against Petro leaving, and he may have known as early as that July that there was going to be little chance to keep Petro since he was already eligible to sign an extension. We were worse off with Faulk instead of Petro starting in October 2020, but it would have been doubly so to have neither.

3. The amnesia around Krug's signing is maddening. Regardless of your feelings about the player and how the contract has played out (I would love to move on from him, by the way) he was regarded almost (if not completely) unanimously around the league as 2nd best UFA defenseman on the market - behind only Petro. We were coming off the crazy COVID season where we were the 2nd best team in the league at the time of the shutdown and we needed to do what we could to stay competitive despite losing Petro. Again, we were worse off with Krug instead of Petro, but we would have been even doubly so with neither.

4. Losing Dunn in the expansion draft sucks, but again a lot of this is due to hindsight. At the time, Parayko wasn't going anywhere and Faulk and Krug had just had a particularly good season together in Krug's first year here, before the wheels fell off. You could only protect 3 defensemen per the draft rules. It sucked losing Dunn, particularly because he blossomed in Seattle into much more than he had (or was allowed to) here, but at the time it was 100% the correct move.

I know I'll get flamed for sticking up for Army, but I don't care. I've been following the team and this league longer than most people on here have been alive, and I understand the bigger picture when it comes to Army's full body of work compared to the other GMs around the league. Army is probably Top 5 in the league (one of the reasons he keeps getting asked to work for Team Canada) and despite the protests of many posters in this forum, has done an excellent job even in light of some of the recent missteps, forced and unforced.

Here is the list of all current and former NHL General Managers that have never signed a bad contract, have never traded a player they should have kept, and have never let a player go in free agency that they should have tried harder to re-sign:

 

[Cotton McKnight]

What happened to our Cup team is eerily simlar to what happened to Dallas. They won the cup, made the finals the next year. Then Armstrong took the job and proceeded to ruin the team. After he was fired 6 or so years later, Dallas was so far in a hole they did not make the playoffs for 8 of the next 10 years

Armstrong is a good GM but has shown a struggle to move on from a championship roster to the next phase once before. Those mistakes that were made are firmly on him. Hopefully we don't have to wait for our Heiskenen to pull out if it.

I was concerned when we hired Armstrong, I remember what you described with the Stars.

Here's to hoping Armstrong learned something from that former mistake.

 

[Majorityof1]

It gets tiresome having to push back on the bolded over and over again, but here goes...

1. There was plausible information from sources inside the Blues locker room that Petro had already decided to move on. We saw it on the ice when he came off from his last shift. Everyone wants to blame the NMC as the reason he left, but you can't force a UFA to re-sign with your team in this or any sport. It sucks, we would have been better off keeping him, but not at any price (like a Karlsson-like number) with a full NMC.

2. The trade for Faulk was a win in a vacuum. We got the better player, for a longer period of time after the extension, and gave up very little to do so. It doesn't take much of a leap to understand that Army made the deal as a hedge against Petro leaving, and he may have known as early as that July that there was going to be little chance to keep Petro since he was already eligible to sign an extension. We were worse off with Faulk instead of Petro starting in October 2020, but it would have been doubly so to have neither.

3. The amnesia around Krug's signing is maddening. Regardless of your feelings about the player and how the contract has played out (I would love to move on from him, by the way) he was regarded almost (if not completely) unanimously around the league as 2nd best UFA defenseman on the market - behind only Petro. We were coming off the crazy COVID season where we were the 2nd best team in the league at the time of the shutdown and we needed to do what we could to stay competitive despite losing Petro. Again, we were worse off with Krug instead of Petro, but we would have been even doubly so with neither.

4. Losing Dunn in the expansion draft sucks, but again a lot of this is due to hindsight. At the time, Parayko wasn't going anywhere and Faulk and Krug had just had a particularly good season together in Krug's first year here, before the wheels fell off. You could only protect 3 defensemen per the draft rules. It sucked losing Dunn, particularly because he blossomed in Seattle into much more than he had (or was allowed to) here, but at the time it was 100% the correct move.

I know I'll get flamed for sticking up for Army, but I don't care. I've been following the team and this league longer than most people on here have been alive, and I understand the bigger picture when it comes to Army's full body of work compared to the other GMs around the league. Army is probably Top 5 in the league (one of the reasons he keeps getting asked to work for Team Canada) and despite the protests of many posters in this forum, has done an excellent job even in light of some of the recent missteps, forced and unforced.

Here is the list of all current and former NHL General Managers that have never signed a bad contract, have never traded a player they should have kept, and have never let a player go in free agency that they should have tried harder to re-sign:

1. No, there wasn't. But even if Petro didn't want to be here, that is also on the GM. If your captain doesn't want to stay with your cup winning team, you f***ed up as a GM.

2. I agree but running a business doesn't happen in a vacuum. If a business decision has down stream consequences, a exec can't go to a board and say, well it was fine in a vacuum.

3. Again, don't care. Armstrong himself has said numerous times that no signing is better than a bad one. This was objectively bad. Doesn't matter what the consensus was. It's his job to know better.

4. Several people on this board had the foresight to say it was a mistake. Why didn't Armstrong? Again, there is no at the time excuse. It is on the GM to know the young player may blossom and the overrated player, Krug, is a bad player.

Keep in mind, I am not advocating firing Armstrong. I just want people to keep their eyes open to unforced errors and potential weakness as a GM that led to those errors and ones in Dallas. But he definitely has skills as a GM and has earned the right to fix this mess. And he's made some good strides to do so that he didn't do (maybe didn't have time to do) in Dallas.

 

[BrokenFace]

My preference is to keep Army but I don't fault anyone for preferring a new voice/direction. My only issue is when people criticize Army for moves that every GM makes. Every GM with any track record has handed out a big contract with too many years to a currently useful vet because that's how every GM has to aquire and keep players in their UFA years. Every GM has had to let good players leave because that's what the cap forces GMs to do.

The no NMC rule is stupid, but does that come from Army or ownership? Why would a GM care if a player "has more power than an owner" as long as he gets the player he wants? Losing Pietro was bad, but I still don't know the story behind why and likely never will. So how can I determine what another GM would have done? When it comes to big players coming into their last contract year, I want a GM who plans for them to be gone unless they sign an extension. I'm not interested in an Islanders-Tavares situation where the team just hopes the player resigns.

For all the hindsight criticism of letting Dunn go, does anyone ever suspect that Berube was the reason Dunn didn't fully emerge here? Same with Walman. Wouldn't any GM have consulted their coach before trading/exposing players who get regular ice time? Army wasn't keeping anyone's ice time low. That's not to criticize Berube even, but just to point out how everything falls on Army to some people.

As far as him leaving Dallas barren, is that relevant when he didn't leave the Blues barren when we stopped contending?

Again, I'm not defending him completely. He never figured out the goalie situation until Binner took care of it himself, and he just finished a season in the worst possible position in the standings. If we finish just outside the playoffs again next year, then we need to get our of the middle ASAP and I wouldn't care if Army is the one to do it. But if you judge any other GM by the standards some use to judge Army, then there isn't a GM in the league who deserves to run the Blues. I've said it before and I'll say it now, what other GM has had anywhere close to Army's success when he only had 1 recent top 10 draft pick in Pietro on his team? A decade of contending, plus a cup, plus a decent prospect pipeline when it was over, with Pietro as the only top 10 drafted guy in the organization. If that doesn't buy him leway then we might as well just fire our GM every year we miss the playoffs. He even pivoted quickly to re-whatevering last year rather than try to get that team into the playoffs. There are plenty of GMs who would have foolishly traded futures to try to salvage last season.

 

[Spear]

The last 2 to leave the ice after the Blues were eliminated from the Covid playoff loss. Even Perron new he was gone...

 

[BlueDream]

View attachment 854764

The last 2 to leave the ice after the Blues were eliminated from the Covid playoff loss. Even Perron new he was gone...

I love how you guys read into a situation where you have no inside information at all and just make major assumptions. Of course Perron and Petro knew the situation that it MIGHT have been his last game for us but maybe that’s because the front office wasn’t giving Pietrangelo an indication that they wanted him back. Who knows? That’s certainly a possibility. But no, because of this one picture that means essentially nothing, you have made up your minds.

@MissouriMook said there were credible sources inside the Blues locker room that Pietrangelo had decided to move on in advance. Okay, so post it. Don’t just sit there and say bullshit and then not back it up. Link the source. But you guys never do. There’s never been anything posted that has supported that, yet you’ll keep making the same claims.

It is tiring having these convos constantly but that’s because you guys never back up your arguments with anything substantial. If you would do it ONE TIME, then maybe it would stop. Prove us wrong that Pietrangelo wanted to leave no matter what, I’m waiting.

 

[Thallis]

View attachment 854764

The last 2 to leave the ice after the Blues were eliminated from the Covid playoff loss. Even Perron new he was gone...

How is that knowing he was gone vs being devastated that their season just ended? If he knew he was leaving why would he have been last off instead being emotionally divested and getting off earlier? This is a literal random picture.

 

[MissouriMook]

@MissouriMook said there were credible sources inside the Blues locker room that Pietrangelo had decided to move on in advance. Okay, so post it. Don’t just sit there and say bullshit and then not back it up. Link the source. But you guys never do. There’s never been anything posted that has supported that, yet you’ll keep making the same claims.

Most of us realize that this is something that happened (or didn’t, depending on what you choose to believe) nearly four years ago. I don’t remember who it was because I don’t obsess over it, but I’m guessing it was one of JR, Strickland, Korac, Thomas, Gordon, a Vegas writer, Lebrun, Pagnotta, Friedman, et al. I certainly can’t post the quote because I didn’t bookmark it and, again, it was almost four years ago. I just remember reading it, thinking “huh, well that would make sense”, then moving on with my life.

You can choose to believe it or not. What would be really helpful to your mental health is to move on and stop re-hashing this unhealthy anger over something that happened almost four years ago and none of us ever had a modicum of control over.

 

[LogosBlue]

View attachment 854764

The last 2 to leave the ice after the Blues were eliminated from the Covid playoff loss. Even Perron new he was gone...

I will never get over DA not resigning Perron. There are just some things you do because you must. Keeping Perron a Blue was one of them. Shameful.

Furthermore, I could give two craps about Petro not being here. I don't understand the hangup on this one. Sure, he's a good defenseman but he's not Makar or Lidstrom for Pete's sake. He was always about himself anyway. He did what was best for him....good for him. bye.

 

[Thallis]

Most of us realize that this is something that happened (or didn’t, depending on what you choose to believe) nearly four years ago. I don’t remember who it was because I don’t obsess over it, but I’m guessing it was one of JR, Strickland, Korac, Thomas, Gordon, a Vegas writer, Lebrun, Pagnotta, Friedman, et al. I certainly can’t post the quote because I didn’t bookmark it and, again, it was almost four years ago. I just remember reading it, thinking “huh, well that would make sense”, then moving on with my life.

You can choose to believe it or not. What would be really helpful to your mental health is to move on and stop re-hashing this unhealthy anger over something that happened almost four years ago and none of us ever had a modicum of control over.

Pretty sure you Mandela effected this because this is the first I'm hearing it even suggested. Hell Korac said this year he would have signed for significantly less money with us if he got the nmc.

 

[Reality Czech]

That’s not true at all. Krug quite literally did block a move last Summer.

And even beyond that, how can you say those contracts haven’t stopped us from making moves? We have no idea of potential deals the team has discussed. I’m very much willing to bet that there are many players we have been interested in, but we couldn’t bring them in because we couldn’t make the money work. We already know for a fact that Armstrong has had trouble moving the contracts of Krug and Scandella, and I’m sure there’s more that we don’t know about. He has constantly talked about how hard trades are these days because it has to be money in vs. money out. So yes, it absolutely has had an effect.

I don't understand why people always seem to overlook the effect Covid had on the salary cap and the implications it had for NHL GMs. These guys make decisions while looking years into the future and base those decisions on how much the cap is projected to go up. Under normal circumstances, all of those "albatross" contracts he signed would not look so bad and he would have had more cap space and flexibility to make other moves.

Not a single person could have foreseen basically a flat cap for 3 years, and it put every team that spends to the cap in a tough spot. We have no idea what moves would have been made had the cap gone up as usual, but it's safe to assume that things would have turned out differently.

 

[Reality Czech]

Pretty sure you Mandela effected this because this is the first I'm hearing it even suggested. Hell Korac said this year he would have signed for significantly less money with us if he got the nmc.

Just because people tell a journalist something doesn't mean it's absolute fact. Both sides play the PR game to make themselves look better. Not sure why an NTC wasn't good enough and Petro absolutely HAD to have the NMC. Was he worried that his skills would diminish so much that he'd be sent to the AHL or what? That contract with Vegas is already starting to look a little rough based on his production this year, so we'll see how it ends up.

I suspect that the no state tax and massive signing bonus Vegas gave him are the REAL reasons that he chose to go there (along with the fact that it's an exciting place to play and had a great team on the rise). But of course Petro is gonna say the NMC was the reason he left because other reasons make him look like a greedy, ungrateful jerk.

 

[Thallis]

Just because people tell a journalist something doesn't mean it's absolute fact. Both sides play the PR game to make themselves look better. Not sure why an NTC wasn't good enough and Petro absolutely HAD to have the NMC. Was he worried that his skills would diminish so much that he'd be sent to the AHL or what? That contract with Vegas is already starting to look a little rough based on his production this year, so we'll see how it ends up.

I suspect that the no state tax and massive signing bonus Vegas gave him are the REAL reasons that he chose to go there (along with the fact that it's an exciting place to play and had a great team on the rise). But of course Petro is gonna say the NMC was the reason he left because other reasons make him look like a greedy, ungrateful jerk.

The NHL just expanded twice and is headed to more expansions. NMC protects from that. Players of Pietrangelo's caliber get NMCs. It's important to all of them enough that they negotiate in it.

Regardless, I'm going to consider it unlikely that Pietrangelo is doing PR for himself 4 years after the fact and put more stock into the reporting than the suggestions of coping fans who have a vested desire in making him look like the bad guy.

 

[Reality Czech]

The NHL just expanded twice and is headed to more expansions. NMC protects from that. Players of Pietrangelo's caliber get NMCs. It's important to all of them enough that they negotiate in it.

Regardless, I'm going to consider it unlikely that Pietrangelo is doing PR for himself 4 years after the fact and put more stock into the reporting than the suggestions of coping fans who have a vested desire in making him look like the bad guy.

You're allowed to think whatever you want just as long as you recognize no one knows the whole story and the full reasons why he made his decision. Journalists get information wrong all the time and we know agents feed them misinformation to help their client out at times. I will always maintain that if his heart was truly in St. Louis then our offer should have been good enough. I also think both sides knew long before the deadline that he wouldn't be coming back for whatever reason.

Regardless, I cheer for the logo on the front and not the name on the back. He was well within his right to choose Vegas' offer over ours, but I stopping being a fan of his once he packed his bags. Seeing Blues fans whining about Petro 4 years later is pretty lame if you ask me, but to each their own.