St. Louis Blues Don’t Need Dmitrij Jaskin – But They Kind Of Do

The St. Louis Blues have tough choices to make when it comes to their final trio of forwards. While NHL experience can be important, the question will remain about potential.

The st. Louis Blues have some very interesting decisions to make regarding their fourth line. The team could have as many as eight or nine guys vying for three spots.

From a fan point of view, it’s great to have that kind of depth. It is great to have guys truly competing for spots, going at it every day, knowing their job is actually on the line.

However, we don’t have a clue as to what the Blues actually want their fourth line to be. Knowing that would make choosing your players much easier.

Ivan Barbashev, Robert Thomas, Jordan Kyrou, Chris Thorburn, Jordan Nolan, Dmitrij Jaskin, Nikita Soshnikov, Zach Sanford and Oskar Sundqvist are all very different types of players. Do you want to go with youth, inexperience and talent or do you want size, grit and tenacity or even still, old school, defensive type players?

You have to know that before you can really construct this fourth line. It makes absolutely no sense to have a line with Robert Thomas and Chris Thorburn together or Nolan and Kyrou playing the wings together. That is what makes figuring out what to do with Jaskin so tough.

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Jaskin has the NHL body. He has NHL experience. There is talent in there, but at this point in his career, even at 25, he seems destined for bottom-six hockey and most likely on the fourth line. So, maybe the Blues don’t even need him.

It is not as though his numbers are irreplaceable. He set a career high for assists in 2017-18 and still only had 11. His 17 points was one shy of tying a career best.

Jaskin’s best, overall, is 13 goals, 11 assists and 18 points (coming in separate seasons, clearly). If these young players are even close to the potential we’ve built them up for, those numbers should be easily achievable, even in a fourth-line role.

The issue, again, reverts back to how you want to play. If you strictly roll out four lines with the potential to score, then Jaskin is probably out. He plays an ok game, but the proof is just not there.

However, even teams that claim to want to roll four scoring lines never fully go that route. So, Jaskin gets the extra video game life – the green Mario mushroom if you will.

Despite our misgivings against him, Jaskin has proven to be one of the team’s better defensive forwards. As Mike Yeo put it in a recent STLToday piece, Jaskin is “real hard and heavy to play against.”

Jaskin did lead the entire team in hits in 2017-18 with 207. He also had 36 takeaways and saw his ice time bumped up almost a minute do to his steadier play.

The problem for Jaskin, from the fans’ point of view, will almost always be a failure to live up to expectations. This guy was built up as a potential top-line player and a top-six forward at the very least. Now, we are debating whether he can play on the fourth line?

Jaskin’s career should not be done, by any means. He still has hockey left in him, as proven by his play in the 2018 World Championships.

He rejuvenated himself as an offensive player, scoring three goals, seven points and an overtime-winning goal for the Czech Republic. Even Jaskin knows it was a different situation though.

"“…I think I played almost 20 minutes every game at the Worlds and that’s a little different than playing 12, 10 here.” – Jaskin in Post-Dispatch"

So, when you strip everything away – our bias, his letdown, etc. – we are left with the fact that he probably does fit this team still. Jaskin has enough offensive talent still in the tank to not be a detriment to guys like Thomas or Kyrou, should they make the team. He’s defensive enough to make for a good fourth line player, no matter what kind of line mates you give him. He just has to bring it.

“I think it’s every year,” he said in the Post-Dispatch. “It doesn’t matter what you did the year before. The coaches have some confidence in you if you played well the year before, but still you have to come here and prove yourself again every year and show them that you deserve the spot here.”

The problem for him is deserve has nothing to do with it. The team is at the spot now where sentiment cannot enter into the equation and if he’s not one of the best 12 forwards, we cannot keep relying on what we thought he would be. At this stage, he’s a fourth line player and if the team doesn’t feel he earned it, there are plenty of guys that can still fill that spot. It’s up to Jaskin to claim it.