Army on… Buyouts: “It’s not something we have on the front burner.” Pending UFAs (Scandella, Kapanen, Blais): “We’re going to let them test the market and we’ll see what’s there. We haven’t closed the doors on anyone.”
by STLBooze3
@St. Louis Blues
8 Comments
A buyout would hurt, but I hope there’s other creative ways we can offload some d contracts. I really don’t see us competing until we clean some of those up.
I’m okay with the UFAs. None of them were that integral in our “success”. Unless we sign Scandella for cheap to be a 6 or 7, I am okay with him riding off to the sunset. Also, wasn’t there rumors at the last game of players indicating he might be retiring?
Please don’t offer them much. I don’t want to see Kap eat up a roster spot.
I don’t see the point of a buyout until we desperately need some extra cap space to extend or sign somebody crucial to contending again. I think the important parts of building this team for this season are what to do with Buchnevich and continuing internal development. I think this could be a big year in solidifying what players our young D in Perunovich, Kessel, and Tucker will be moving forward. I definitely don’t see any huge free agency moves that could put us back into a top 2 division spot right now.
The biggest problematic defensemen contracts all become partial-NTCs after 2024-25 season, which will be potentially easier to offload. It also incentivizes movement this off season if any of those players (Faulk or Krug) want more of a say in where they can potentially be shipped off to, so yes buyouts of those contracts make zero sense.
When Scandella was in the lineup last year, he was good. He may not have played up to his per year cap hit, but he was all around good. At this point, you almost can’t trust him to stay healthy for 60 games. I would let him walk and wish him the best of luck.
Kapanen also has health issues, in large part due to his shot-blocking last year. It’s hard to tell a guy to get lost over that. His DUI over Xmas break last year might not help his case, though. I’m on the fence about giving him a roster spot when we’ve got prospects we need to get on the ice.
Blais is a mystery. There’s got to be some kind of issue between he and the coaches. He started out last season averaging about 11:43 time-on-ice in the first 19 games with 5 points and had a +/- of -4. He ended finishing the season playing just 53 games and averaging just 9:41 time-on-ice. The real kicker, though, is he is miles ahead of anyone else on the team in hits. He had 194 total hits (most on the team) in just 514 minutes of ice-time. For context, the next closest Blues’ checkers were: Walker, who had a hit about every 5 minutes; Toropchenko had a hit about every 6.22 minutes; Schenn had a hit about every 8.5 minutes. Blais laid a hit every 2.64 minutes. Tanner Jeannot is well-respected for his hitting and he went 3.13 minutes per hit. Michael Pezetta (1.96 minutes per hit) was the only player in the NHL last season with a higher hit rate than Blais. I’m not crazy about letting Blais walk, because he obviously has an ability that few other guys do, whatever the issue is behind the scenes needs to be ironed out.
I’m thankful for Army’s stance on buyouts. There’s more harm than good to come from them in my opinion. As others have mentioned, Krug and Faulk move to partial NMCs next year, and with only two more years at 4 mil, there isn’t really all that much long-term pain with Leddy. Parayko could still hurt if he falls off but I think we all feel a lot better about him right now than we did a year ago.
He has ultimate job security, why should he care?
If Blais has issues between him and the coaches let him walk!!!!