What About The Blues Defense?

It’s time to talk waivers.

Mike Richards of the L.A. Kings was placed on waivers today, making every hockey fan, blogger, or journalist (who isn’t stuck on a plane) lose their minds over the possibilities. Will he clear waivers? Will he be picked off by Nashville, or Arizona, Minnesota or San José? It’s not even remotely likely that St. Louis will make a move for him, with them being pretty full-up on centers at the moment, but it does make you think about the future.

We’re five weeks out from trade deadline, and St. Louis currently sits just below Chicago, money-wise, with the eleventh-highest cap hit in the NHL.

And that, my friends, is not good news for St. Louis.

All numbers taken from NHLnumbers.com.

The Money

To rehash old news, Vladimir Tarasenko’s contract is up at the end of this season. Tarasenko has a cap hit for the 2014-2015 season of $900,000, and is a restricted free agent afterwards. He is a young player, and is still developing, but everything we have seen out of him over the past two seasons shows that he has the ability to be a powerful forward for the Blues…if the team can afford to retain him.

St. Louis has $58 million committed to only 16 players next year, and if they want to maintain a roster of 24 (Brodeur was included in that count) they have to move some money around.

When I look at St. Louis, my eye gets stuck on their defenders.

We’ve speculated before that the best way to do so is to lose a player like Oshie or Berglund, someone who is middle-of-the-pack talent but not middle-of-the-pack money. The Blues certainly need to gain some depth up front; the Steen-Backes-Oshie line is currently hot stuff, but lacks a player whose main focus is scoring. The STL line is generally strong, and has that sniper in Tarasenko that the S-B-O line lacks, but can’t always maintain control of the puck in the offensive zone.

So it certainly wouldn’t be a problem if St. Louis went for a forward or two at trade deadline.

But when I look at St. Louis, my eye gets stuck on their defenders.

The St. Louis Blues Defense

The Blues have skilled defenders, to be sure. Shattenkirk and Pietrangelo are high in the standings for defenders this season with, Shattenkirk 2nd in the NHL amongst defenders with 39 points and Pietrangelo 21st with 27 points in the season.

But even with Shattenkirk making the All-Star team, Pietrangelo generally being a boss on the ice and Bouwmeester’s heck of a slapshot, the Blues need to strengthen their back end. They need a defensive superstar.

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Puck Prose

While they might have one in Shattenkirk, we haven’t seen it out of him yet.

The last Blues player to win a Norris trophy was Chris Pronger for the 1999-2000 season. I might be showing my youth here, but fifteen years is a long time to go between Norris trophy wins, especially when you look at how often St. Louis is in the playoffs, and how deep they go into the series. While a Norris trophy doesn’t directly correlate to a Stanley Cup strong defense does directly correlate to the ability to pick up more points in the regular season, and consequently go further in the playoffs.

I took a look at how the defenders stacked up against each other, looking at three factors: time on ice, PDO and Relative Corsi For %. (Bouwmeester and Pietrangelo are frequently on the power play, accounting for some of their extra ice time.)

St. Louis Blues Defenders TOI% / PDO – Table from war-on-ice.com.

Looking over the graph, we can see that there’s a huge difference in PDO between players, essentially drawing a line down the middle with Pietrangelo, Bouwmeester and Shattenkirk on one side and Jackman, Leopold and Lindbohm on the other. PDO measures the on-ice save percentage plus on-ice shot percentage, and the higher your PDO, the better. You can see in this article the law of averages tends to even out a player’s PDO over the course of a season, but as we’re midway through 2014-2015 we start to separate the wheat from the chaff.

While this table in and of itself isn’t definitive, when compared to top teams across the other divisions, it’s clear that the best teams have a deep defensive squad who routinely clock in around 100 or higher for PDO. There are a few that are more spread out, but they make up for that in offensive firepower, registering more shots on goal than others. And when teams find themselves struggling in the offensive end, the weight falls to their defensive players to make up the difference.

The Solution

More from St Louis Blues News

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• St. Louis Blues Torey Krug Already Injured Before 2023-24 Season
• Former St. Louis Blues Forward Going Into Hall Of Fame
• Can Hofer Upstage Binnington in Starting Goalie Spot for Blues?
• St. Louis Blues 2023-24 fourth line depth chart could be surprisingly strong

The Blues could stand to let go of some of their less effective defenders, scratch that third goalie spot, and spend some actual dough on a top-20 defender who would provide a steady pairing for Shattenkirk. A Brent Seabrook to Shattenkirk’s Duncan Keith. Someone who takes care of the crease, allowing Shattenkirk to be the fourth offensive lineman, but who can still put a Shea Weber-slapshot on goal when needed.

This, in my opinion, is the best way to keep Tarasenko up front and continue to be a contender for the Cup. Once some of the defensive pressure is relieved more often than not we will see more scoring opportunities and Tarasenko put more shots on net. Fiscally, this is going to be a tricky decision, but beefing up the defense is the first step to the Cup Finals, where St. Louis hasn’t been since the 1969-1970 season.

Next: NHL Injury Report: Notable Injuries (And Not-So-Notables)