St. Louis Blues will have to get creative to manage no-trade protections this summer
St Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong wants to re-tool his roster this offseason. One of the many issues the Blues GM will have to navigate is the fact, a number of his current roster players hold trade protection. It’s going to take a lot of creativity from the veteran executive to strike a deal.
Potential trade candidates include Pavel Buchnevich. The two-way forward has one season left on his current contract at a $5.8-million cap hit, meanwhile Buchnevich owns a 12-team no-trade list and has some say in the matter. On the back end, Armstrong could dangle one of his veterans, including Colton Parayko, Nick Leddy, Justin Faulk, and Torey Krug – but it won’t be as easy as you think. All four defensemen have full no-trade clauses for the 2024-25 season.
The Blues finished this past season with a 43-33-6 record, missing the second wild-card spot by six points. Armstrong is at a crossroads as he looks to make upgrades this summer.
On today’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli and Colby Cohen discussed the Blues’ interesting offseason ahead and had this to say:
Frank Seravalli: I like at this defense group and you can’t possibly bring back the same group again, can you?
Colby Cohen: Well Frank, listen. There’s problems with this, because I’ll tell you why, when you look at the d-core, their four mainstays, they’ve all got term, they’ve all got money and they’ve all got no-trade clauses. So, it makes things a little bit more difficult for Doug Armstrong because these are players that really control their own destiny and they have a lot of term. Parayko’s got six years.
Frank Seravalli: That’s the one guy I wouldn’t consider moving. Parayko was unbelievable last year and he’s only going to age well and that contract is only going to get better the more the cap goes up.
Colby Cohen: And you got to think Matthew Kessel finds his way onto the NHL roster at a full-time turn, what are they going to do with Perunovich, he’s an RFA, probably inexpensive to bring him back but it doesn’t seem like they believe in him that much.
Frank Seravalli: Because Doug Armstrong said with Perunovich to make the club you have to stay out of the tub. Or I think his quote was ‘you can’t make the club from the tub’.
Colby Cohen: So when I look at this roster Frank, there’s really only one player that is a mainstay player who only has a year left on their contract and it’s Pavel Buchnevich. He makes $5.8 million, he’s got one-year left and everybody else has term. Kevin Hayes has term with protection, the only two forwards on that group Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas, they have no protection around their contracts, are those the two players you look to move? Because look, they both would have a lot of value and neither of them have trade protection. Doug Armstrong is in a little bit of a pickle here, he’s got a decent amount of cap space, he doesn’t need a ton of bodies as far as the roster goes, as far as who are signed, but the players who he would like to move all have trade protection when you go up and down the roster.
So he’s gonna have to get creative, a guy like Torey Krug, who he’s tried to trade once before and you know said no, I’m going to exercise my no-trade clause here. Last year it was reported he was going to be traded to the Flyers, maybe that wasn’t last summer, maybe it was the summer before, correctly if I’m wrong and you remember, but you know he’s got his hands tied.
For more on the Blues and the rest of Thursday’s episode, watch here: