The 2024 NHL Trade Deadline is right around the corner, and as usual around this time of year, hockey fans around the globe have plenty of speculation about what might happen.
Blues General Manager Doug Armstrong and his team are certainly in a tough position — the club finds itself within reach of a Stanley Cup Playoff spot but getting there won’t be very easy in a competitive race for one of the Western Conference’s two Wild Card positions.
As of Monday morning, the Blues found themselves seven points out of a playoff spot with 22 games remaining in the regular-season.
Last season, Armstrong was aggressive ahead of the deadline, acquiring prospects and draft picks for veteran players like Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ivan Barbashev, who were all set to become unrestricted free agents.
Players that would become unrestricted free agents this offseason include forwards Kasperi Kapanen, Sammy Blais, Oskar Sundqvist and defenseman Marco Scandella. The only unrestricted free agent the Blues currently have for next season would be Pavel Buchnevich.
The team does have a solid crop of prospects on the horizon — including recent first-round picks like Jimmy Snuggerud, Dalibor Dvorsky, Otto Stenberg and Theo Lindstein — all of which helped the Blues snag the cover of The Hockey News’ Future Watch edition last month.
So, with the future already looking bright, Armstrong could opt to move players now to complement that with more NHL-ready players, prospects or picks, accelerating the re-tool of his roster even more.
“I know in our market, and I’ve talked to our ownership group about it and I get their guidance on it, I don’t think our fan base deserves or wants to be part of an eight-to-10-year rebuild,” Armstrong said in a recent interview with The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun. “At some point, you have to gain as many assets as you can, and then at some point, you then have to turn those assets and build a team.”
Will Armstrong choose to hold onto his unrestricted free agents now to compete for that playoff spot? Or make deals that build for the future?
He’s not showing his cards just yet, telling The Athletic only that deals would “really have to improve the future.”
Armstrong and his top hockey operations executives will be with the team in New York for Friday’s 2 p.m. CT deadline.
What will happen?
For now, we just have to wait and see.
