Summers are always when general managers do the bulk of their work. The summer of 2016 is definitely going to earn Doug Armstrong his paycheck.
The St. Louis Blues front office have a difficult road ahead this summer. There are going to be several decisions to make that will not only impact their roster for the coming season, but could impact their roster for years to come.
On the one hand, at least things will be kept simple for Doug Armstrong. Outside of trying to move Kevin Shattenkirk either this summer or some time before the trade deadline, the only position the Blues have to worry about is forward.
The Blues have all their defensemen from 2015-16 under contract. They have both Jake Allen and Brian Elliott under contract for one more season. So, it’s the forwards that have several missing pieces.
In terms of pure salary, i.e. not taking into account bonuses etc., the Blues already have just north of $58 million locked up for 2016-17. That number does include Petteri Lindbohm, who gives the roster a little flexibility by having a two-way contract that can come off the books when in the minors. However, he makes less than $1 million per season, so it’s of no great difference.
The hole the Blues are in is that, depending on what the salary cap is for the upcoming season and what owner Tom Stillman can afford to spend, they have between $12-16 million to spend but have to spread that over seven players (maybe more).
One reason it’s maybe more, is the fluidity of rosters. Currently, Dmitrij Jaskin is listed as a non-roster player on some cap related websites. He is also a free-agent, likely to get at least a raise from $750,000 to something around $1 million. Even if he signs a two-way deal – unlikely – that’s still going to affect the payroll when he’s on the NHL team. So, even if you pencil him in, that still leaves six or seven spots to fill with not much money to spend.
David Backes clearly wants both a raise and a long-term deal. Anything under $5.5-6 million seems unlikely at this juncture. So, if we use the lower end number of $12 million available for your seven spots, we’ve just taken half of that away for one player.
Troy Brouwer will likely be cheaper than Backes, but not by any great amount. You might save $1-2 million, but that’s still close to 50% of what you can spend going toward one man.
Complicating matters is Jaden Schwartz‘ likely deal. Concrete numbers have not been thrown out, but he made $2.35 million last season. Schwartz is arbitration eligible, so there’s no telling what the deal could be. It could be as little as $3 million or go up as high as $5-6 million.
Even putting that contract in the lower range, things will be difficult. If you bring back either Brouwer or Backes and Schwartz, you probably only have $2-6 million left to sign at least five more players.
Not even looking at potential free-agents from outside, it would be difficult to afford the Blues current crop of free-agents, given those numbers. Steve Ott is unrestricted and earned $2.6 million in 2015-16. That’s potentially the rest of your available money gone right there.
Kyle Brodziak and Scottie Upshall were brought in on professional tryout contracts. They made $900,000 and $700,000 respectively. After the years they had with the Blues, you would expect they would want, at least, modest raises. Magnus Paajarvi also is a restricted free-agent and while we would all love to see an upgrade from him, he might be an option to keep just to keep costs lower.
So, you see that things are going to be tight. The Blues have some options. Ivan Barbashev is still highly touted in the organization. He would provide a little bit of cost certainty as his deal only costs $772,500 according to the Blues’ page on GeneralFanager.
Though he could very well wait until the trade deadline, another route to flexibility for Armstrong is trading Kevin Shattenkirk. Not only would you be taking $4.25 million off the books, but you give yourself options.
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Defensively, you can choose between Jordan Schmaltz ($925K) or Lindbohm ($636,666) to fill out the roster, while giving more prominent roles to Joel Edmundson and Robert Bortuzzo. You have more money available to fill those forward slots with legitimate NHL talent. You also have the flexibility to trade for an actual NHL player or high rated prospect.
These things aren’t impossible to do. It is hard to figure out the math on the surface of expecting raises and uncertainties of who is getting better offers elsewhere. However, Jori Lehtera and Bortuzzo are the only players getting raises from their 2015-16 salaries.
If the salary cap goes up as expected, the Blues could (in theory) bring everyone back with modest raises. They already afforded them this season, so what changes so much for the next?
Sadly, the real world doesn’t work like that. Most players want more than modest raises and if they don’t get them in St. Louis, there is almost always a team willing to provide it.
Armstrong has his fair share of doubters. In hindsight, some of the deals he has given out have not been financially sound. They were fair deals at the time though.
If we take out personal bias, Armstrong has rarely paid more than the market would have bared in any deal. With the exception of the Ryan Miller trade, he hasn’t made any player swaps that haven’t really worked in one form or another. Sure, St. Louis hasn’t always brought in what they wanted, but none of the players they’ve given up have gone on to light the world on fire either.
Next: 3 Free Agents the Blues Might Consider
Regardless of any of our personal feelings on Armstrong, he’s going to have to be on his game this summer. Whether it’s bringing back current players or looking for outside help, it’s going to be difficult. There are lots of tough decisions to make. We all love to play armchair GM, but when it comes down to it, I’m glad I’m not the one in charge of making the choices he will have to make.