Central Division Offseason Roundup: St. Louis Blues

 

Today marks the beginning of our roundtable series where we recap the offseason changes made by the Avalanche’s Central Division rivals. We won’t be delving too deep into the financial aspects of each team’s signings, focusing instead on how their new lineups will fare against the Avalanche in 2016.

We start with the St. Louis Blues, who have had a relatively quiet summer compared to some of their divisional rivals.

For the last two years especially, the Blues have been a recurring thorn in the side of the Avalanche. Head Coach Ken Hitchcock has yet to lead this Blues squad to anything less than a first- or second-place finish in the hyper-competitive Central Division. But at the same time, the Blues’ recurrent early playoff exits have plagued the team for all of Hitchcock’s four-season tenure. They’ve got up-and-coming talent, a stockpile of two-way forwards to make any team jealous, and recently completed a headline trade. But will any of their moves this offseason be enough to finally attain a deep playoff run?

Biggest moves so far:

• Extended RW Vladimir Tarasenko for 8 years.
• Extended C Jori Lehtera for 3 years.
• Extended G Jake Allen for 2 years.
• Signed D Andre Benoit for 1 year (2 way).
• Signed D Chris Butler for 1 year.
• Signed F Kyle Brodziak for 1 year.
• Signed G Luke Opilka to 3 year ELC.
• Lost C Vladimir Sobotka to KHL.
• Lost D Barret Jackman to Nashville.
• Lost RW T.J. Oshie to Washington.
• Acquired RW Troy Brouwer, G Pheonix Copley and a 2016 3rd from Washington.

A full list of the Blues’ signings can be found on their official site.

As a short disclaimer, Sobotka left for the KHL last season, but we are including him as noteworthy here because there was a decent amount of speculation that he might return. Keeping that in mind, the BSN staff weighed in on how the Summer 2015 has played out for the Blues so far:

The Tarasenko extension and Oshie trade stand out as the Blues’ biggest moves this offseason. Aside from those two, what else catches your eye?

Cole: Barret Jackman isn’t the effective, stay at home defenseman he once was, so while his loss won’t necessarily hurt the Blues on the ice next year, it does mark a turning of the tide in St. Louis. One of the most feared defensive groups in the Western Conference is thinning and next season it will contain more question marks than it has in several years. The Blues are still deep and boast one of the NHL’s best collections of two-way forwards, but Andre Benoit, Robert Bortuzzo, Carl Gunnarsson, and Chris Butler don’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of opponents. The Blues are a defense first team and they didn’t do enough to replace one of their long-time cornerstones.

On the other side of the ice, Kyle Brodziak might be the most underrated signing of the offseason so far. The productive bottom six center was underused and under-appreciated in Minnesota and at just a $900K cap hit he’s a great value addition for St. Louis.

Andi: The biggest move that catches my eye is the one St. Louis didn’t make. Even though they signed a collection of young goalies, it looks like they’re heading into next year with the Brian Elliott/Jake Allen tandem intact. For a team largely built to “win now”, running two mundane netminders isn’t going to get them there, a fact that became painfully clear this year during the playoffs.

Also, with Sobotka staying in the KHL, who is Duchene going to punch?!

AJ: I’m going to disagree with Andi here. With a clear-cut backup in Elliott and one of their top young players working his way to the starting role in Allen, I’m not sure what the Blues were supposed to do. Would they be better off doing like Dallas and paying Antti Niemi big bucks to handle a job he’s already failed with? Should they have made a big move for one of Toronto’s goalies? Or Robin Lehner? There wasn’t a goalie available that made them better and was cheap enough to fit under their salary cap. The best thing they did was they didn’t get stupid and move on from Jake Allen after just one season.

I also agree with Cole that the Brodziak signing was very savvy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up as one of the best value deals of the summer.

Their other move that raised my eyebrow a bit was the extension given to Jori Lehtera. Given that I don’t hate the Carl Soderberg deal for the Avs, it’s difficult to dislike the Lehtera contract given their numbers are almost identical and Lehtera is still just 27. I think it’s a decent contract but they’re rolling the dice, like the Avs are, that Lehtera’s 44 points is the bottom of his production line. Given the growth of some of the forwards on the roster and in the system, I’m not so sure he isn’t a third line center for the Blues behind Stastny and Backes when that extension kicks in. I don’t think it’s a bad contract today but definitely think it will be a contract to keep an eye on in the future, especially with Backes likely to get a hefty raise next year.

Casey: That situation at center sounds familiar.

Do you think the St. Louis Blues are a better team than they were last season?

Cole: The Blues haven’t been an offensive dynamo in a long time, and swapping the talented T.J. Oshie for Troy Brouwer certainly doesn’t help this squad which has been starved for goals in every recent post-season. Scoring could improve a bit with Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz are still improving, and Paul Stastny could rebound from a down year, but when it comes to raw talent, the Blues have less of it today than they did last year. Add in another season of unconvincing goaltending and I don’t see how this Blues team is better than any iteration in the last five years or how they’ll finally make it out of the first round.

Casey: As-is, this Blues roster has a lot of talent up front but middling defense (note, middling by typical St. Louis Blues standards) and a question mark over their goaltending. They are shaping up to remind me a lot of the San Jose Sharks, another team that’s a tough matchup in the regular season, but later on…

I’m in the camp that sees Oshie as a talented but oft-overrated player. However, as overrated as Oshie might be, I am unconvinced by the addition of Brouwer. Oshie’s absence at center is something you can see the Blues overcoming easily enough: Backes, Stastny, and Lehtera have that covered. But on the wing, is Brouwer adding much?

Andi:  At best, these moves will cause the Blues to break even with their results from last year.  I’d be very surprised if they improved, especially considering the silliness that is the Central division.  On paper, it appears their forward corps took a small step back, their defense took a slightly larger step back, and their goaltending still looks like the Riddler from Batman stopped by.  They continue to be a team that shouldn’t be taken lightly, but their off-season to this point is largely underwhelming.

AJ: I think the Blues will be better because their prime guys are going to be a year older and a year better. When I say better, I mean better in the postseason. They’re clearly going to do work in the regular season but I think Tarasenko and Schwartz are legitimate studs and they have a deep pool of forwards that can contribute with no obvious weakness. The addition of Brouwer isn’t a clear-cut upgrade but it does remove a player who had shown he can’t be a top tier offensive player in the playoffs so at least they won’t be looking for him to make it happen anymore.

I think Jake Allen is a legitimate number 1 and people have been awful quick to give up on a guy who is 24 years old and predictably struggled in increased NHL exposure after a very good AHL career. I think Allen takes another step forward this season and takes the job from Brian Elliott permanently.

How do you think these changes will affect the Blues’ performance against the Avalanche?

Cole: With the exception of Vladimir Tarasenko and Kevin Shattenkirk, the Blues core pieces are another year older and another year slower, and watching their window to win slip away just as the Avs’ core players are entering their primes. The Blues should still be a Top 3 finisher in the Central Division, and as a great possession team they’ll still be a tough matchup foker&utm_source=direct%ldn’t be the dominant force that’s bullied the Avalanche around over the last few seasons.

Casey: The addition of players like Blake Comeau and Francois Beauchemin to the Avs lineup will impact the Avs vs. Blues game more than any of the Blues’ changes, I think. But Cole brought up a good point earlier regarding the new look of the Blues defense. This is the first year in a long time where the Blues appear to have grown weaker defensively. None of their offseason moves have been terrible, but the current lineup may not be able to get it done in the competitive Central. The Avs will likely still struggle against the Blues by virtue of the way the two teams are built, but the loss of Jackman/Oshie/Sobotka won’t affect that too much.

Andi:  I agree with my compatriots above. I think the Avs have gotten slightly better and the Blues have gotten slightly worse, which only makes the Central that much more competitive. But, with Blues/Avs contests, history has shown that logic doesn’t always need apply. During the Avs’ stretch of futility to close out the 2011 season, the Blues seemed like the only team they could beat.  Regardless, next year should see close affairs between the two clubs.  On paper, they finally might be a good matchup.

AJ: The Avs-Blues matchups the last two years have been shaped mostly by the confidence the Avs were playing with. When they were believing in themselves and things were working, they showed well. When they were struggling to find a rhythm, they badly struggled against a very good team. I don’t think anything St. Louis has done this off-season has changed the dynamics of the matchup.

Final thoughts:

For the last few seasons, the Avalanche have seemed to struggle playing against the idea of the St. Louis Blues. They’re a competent, possession-positive team that isn’t afraid to play the body. The Avalanche struggle against teams that can shut down their high-flying forwards and exploit the traditional possession weaknesses of their third and fourth lines. The Blues exemplify this better than any team save for maybe the Winnipeg Jets. The good news for the Avalanche is that this summer, the Blues haven’t made any blockbuster moves that give them a drastic leg up. The bad news of course is that they are still the archetype of a team build and coaching system designed to shut down teams like Colorado.