For the second straight summer, St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong hosted a draft roundtable with reporters on Monday at the Centene Community Ice Center.
The Blues have the No. 16 overall pick in the NHL Draft, June 28-29, in Las Vegas. They have a total of nine picks in the seven-round draft, including two second-rounders and two third-rounders, which were acquired in trades with the Toronto Maple Leafs for Ryan O’Reilly and the New York Rangers for Vladimir Tarasenko.
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Armstrong isn’t one to go into detail about which players the Blues have on their radar, but he did provide a big-picture look at the draft.
In The Athletic’s mock draft last month, colleague Corey Pronman chose Jukurit center Konsta Helenius from the Finnish Elite League for the Blues with the No. 16 pick. Other mocks have suggested that the club lands with a defenseman, such as Plzen’s Adam Jiricek from the Czech Extraliga.
“There’s obviously some attractive players,” Armstrong said. “My experiences and probably every manager is the same. When you pick No. 10, there’s nine great guys. When you pick No. 16, there’s 15 great guys. When you pick No. 28, there’s 27 great guys.”
If the Blues stick with the No. 16 pick, they’ll take the best player available, as determined by Armstrong and his staff.
“I don’t think drafting for positional necessity is proper just because of the runway that these players are going to need to get up and running,” he said. “I do know that when you have good players at any position, they become assets to other teams that might have a glut of players in one area.”
If the best available are all equal, the team’s philosophy is to lean toward defensem*n first, centers second and wingers third.
With the defensive depth in this year’s draft, however, the Blues may be inclined to trade up.
Atop the list, as debated recently by The Athletic, there’s Michigan State’s Artyom Levshunov (NCAA), Nizhny Novgorod’s Anton Silayev (KHL), London’s Sam Dickinson (OHL), Denver’s Zeev Buium and Saginaw’s Zayne Parekh (OHL).
Then, projected perhaps closer to where the Blues are slated to pick, there’s Calgary’s Carter Yakemchuk (WHL), Valerenga’s Stian Solberg (Norway) and Jiricek.
“You’ve got some big horses back there and you’ve got some small, dynamic forwards or some small, dynamic, puck-moving D,” Armstrong said. “If you’re looking for a defenseman and you can get the 5-11, 6-footers and you can get the 6-7 guys too. It seems to be a good selection of smorgasbord of whatever you like at the buffet line, but there’s a lot of depth in that area — certainly at the top of it.”
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How much would the Blues have to pay to move up, or more importantly, how much would they be willing to pay?
The staff recently met at the NHL scouting combine in Buffalo, where those types of conversations were had. Armstrong purposely schedules those meetings a couple of weeks in advance of the draft so that there’s time to digest everything and re-evaluate.
“I think our guys are excited about who they’re going to get at 16,” Armstrong said. “They’d be excited if we can get into the top 10, and I think they understand if we move back and get another second. Having three seconds would be exciting, too.
“We put them in different categories: chase, don’t chase, move back. Let’s say you want to get into Nos. 8, 9, 10, 11, I think that’s doable, (but) it’s painful. I’ve got to get to the threshold or pain that we’re willing to take as an organization.”
| Round | Picks | Extra pick acquired or pick traded |
|---|---|---|
1st | 1 | |
2nd | 2 | From Maple Leafs in Ryan O'Reilly deal |
3rd | 2 | From Rangers in Vladimir Tarasenko deal |
4th | 1 | |
5th | 1 | |
6th | To Flyers in Kevin Hayes deal | |
7th | 2 | From Islanders in Robert Bortuzzo deal |
The Blues, like a lot of teams, use a point system to determine what moves are worth it.
“So pick No. 16 is worth an ‘X’ amount of points, pick No. 12 is worth ‘X’ amount of points, and so are our seconds and thirds,” Armstrong explained. “We try and make those as equal as possible. So if you take No. 16 and both seconds, you add that point total up (and) does it get you to No. 8? Does it get you to No. 11? Where does it get you? Then also, our point total isn’t exact to somebody else’s. Then you’re working on what they see and where their prospect pool is. Do they want to have those extra picks?”
Armstrong said that he doesn’t see the Blues trading the No. 16 pick to improve the roster in 2024-25. Rather, if they did move in the order — up or down — it would be with the future in mind.
“If it’s somebody in an age bracket that I see a longer-term vision, would we do that?” he said. “If there was the right player that had the right amount of term that we could see growing with certain people, we could do that. But I see it more of a selection type of a draft for us.”
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In his session with reporters, Armstrong addressed a variety of other offseason topics, as well.
On the potential of buying out players: “It’s not something we have on the front burner. We could do it. It’s not something that we put in stone, like we’ll never buy anybody out come hell or high water. But it has to make economic sense, and we haven’t seen that yet.”
On whether any of the Blues’ pending unrestricted free agents will be re-signed (Sammy Blais, Kasperi Kapanen, Marco Scandella): “I’ve talked to everyone and we’re going to let them test the market and we’ll see what’s there. We haven’t closed any doors on anyone. That could change. But as of now, we’ve gotten this far, we have ‘X’ amount of cap space, and we want to see what’s available to us. We also want to see internal growth.”
On contract talks with Pavel Buchnevich, who will be entering the final year of his contract in 2024-25: “They’ve been really good (discussions). I met with his representative in Buffalo with Alex (Steen). We’re not talking economics now because we don’t need to. For Buch, when he starts his contract, he’s going to be 30. We have to provide him (with) information (on) where he wants to be between (age) 30 and mid-30s, whatever that term is. Buch has to weigh what I believe the next two years (look like), and then he has to talk to Alex about what he believes moving forward. There’s synergy between what Alex and I think, but we’re not (in) lockstep in everything, and I think that’s good. He has a vision of what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. They’ve had those conversations, and does it correlate to what (Buchnevich) wants out of his career.”
On the possibility of trading veteran players this summer, and whether there’s interest in them around the league: “Yeah, I think we have to be open to everything. Yeah, there is (interest). When you look at teams that have missed the playoffs for a number of years, what do they want? They want veterans. They have enough kids and they want veterans. So yeah, there’s interest in proven players.”
On the possibility of making an offer sheet to a restricted free agent: “Offer sheets are out there, too. I think there’s a perception, or a thought, that offer sheets are taboo by managers. Offer sheets that don’t work are taboo by managers. That’s the assessment that we all make. I think teams are more than willing to at least explore that now. The cap has gone up, but a lot of that money has already been spent by the teams. If you have an RFA that is in an uncomfortable spot, it’s at least my job responsibility to assess: Is that an option that we should explore?”
On whether the Blues will be adding a new assistant coach to Drew Bannister’s staff: “Drew is working through that now. He’s had a lot of really good conversations. We did the X/Y axis with Drew: write down what you want and put the names at the top and they’ve got to check these boxes of what you want. We’re not going to bring someone on this staff that doesn’t check those boxes just to say that we’ve added an assistant. That’s what he’s going through now, to see if there’s someone that he believes can make his staff better.”
(Photo: Jeff Curry / USA Today)
Jeremy Rutherford is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the St. Louis Blues. He has covered the team since the 2005-06 season, including a dozen years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He is the author of "Bernie Federko: My Blues Note" and "100 Things Blues Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." In addition, he is the Blues Insider for 101 ESPN in St. Louis. Follow Jeremy on Twitter @jprutherford
