A Robert Thomas trade was always meant for the offseason

One of the hot-button topics heading into last Friday’s NHL Trade Deadline was whether the St. Louis Blues were going to move forward Robert Thomas.

Thomas has been a star player on a struggling Blues team that is heading toward a rebuild, and moving a big-money contract like Thomas’ would be a step in that direction. However, Thomas has a full no-trade clause, meaning he would have to approve a trade, if one was on the table.

However, Thomas revealed on The Sheet on Monday that he had never been asked by the Blues’ front office to waive his NTC, leading many to think a trade might be pushed further down the road.

On Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Jeff Marek of The Sheet joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Steve Peters to discuss why a Robert Thomas trade wasn’t going to happen this season.

Jeff Marek: I think the prices were extremely high. I think that, whether it was any of the Buffaloes, the Montreals, the Detroits, all the places that we suspect would have been and should have been interested in Robert Thomas, the names that we’re talking about here, just the sort of volume of trade that it would be, looks like. None of these trades looked like an in-season deal. Massive deals like this we’re more familiar with in the off-season, when the cap goes up, and teams have had their run and are sort of taking inventory. I’m not surprised just because the Robert Thomas deal would have been a massive one.

If you’re looking to deal one of the most elite playmaking centers in the game, you want to have as open a field as possible. And I think that’s one of the reasons why Doug Armstrong set the price incredibly high, because he knew that he was dealing with a narrow field here. Now, you let the NHL season play out, you let the playoffs play out, teams have a better look at what’s under the hood and what they need. All of a sudden, what turns from only being able to deal with three or four teams for someone like Robert Thomas, all of a sudden, you can deal with 15, and you have a bigger marketplace. So, it didn’t surprise me that it never got to the level where Doug Armstrong went to Robert Thomas and said, ‘Hey, we got something here. Would you be interested in waving your no-trade to go there?’ As Robert Thomas mentioned on the show, too, he never asked for a trade.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…