St. Louis Blues: Brace Yourselves, The Central Is About To Get Better

With free agency opening tomorrow, the St. Louis Blues are likely to stay put. However, the same cannot be said for their division rivals.

The St. Louis Blues have done nothing to try and create any cap space to go after a marquee free agent when free agency opens July 1, and according to capfriendly.com, the Blues have just over $15 million to spend.

However, the Blues do not necessarily need to dump any of the contracts that are eating up the majority of the team’s cap space, and it just means St. Louis will not be able to compete with some other teams in their division.

The Blues still have seven unrestricted free agents they need to sign, including rookie phenom Jordan Binnington. With Binnington and Joel Edmundson likely taking up almost $10 million between them, there is going to be little room for maneuvering.

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St. Louis will still need to pay their other RFAs, Oskar Sundqvist, Robby Fabbri, Sammy Blais, Zach Sanford, and Ivan Barbashev.

Binnington and Edmundson are due for the biggest pay raise on the team, but with the remaining group of five having played such an essential role in the team’s Cup run, I would imagine they would be rewarded handsomely as well.

In all likelihood, the St. Louis Blues will look very similar to the 2018-19 edition that won the franchise’s first ever Stanley Cup. However, this does not guarantee that the Blues will still be able to walk right into one of the top three spots in the division.

Many of the Blues’ division rivals have been linked to some of the biggest free agents. Matt Duchene, Joe Pavelski, and Matts Zuccarello have all been rumored to find landing spots in the Central Division.

The Blues, Predators, and Jets were all separated by one point at the end of the season, with the Predators taking the title, and the Jets getting home ice in the first round based off of tiebreakers over the Blues.

Winnipeg has not been linked to any of the big names in free agency. They still, however, have a strong roster with the likes of Patrick Laine, Blake Wheeler, Kyle Connor, and Connor Hellebuyck.

The Jets have already begun to do a quick retooling of the roster by trading away Kevin Hayes and Jacob Trouba. The Jets may not be good enough to win the division next year, but they are still a team you do not want to see on your schedule.

The Dallas Stars were one of the best team’s in the NHL down the stretch of last season, and their play propelled them to a playoff birth and a date with the Blues in the second round.

Next season, despite seemingly losing Zuccarello, they could be an even more dangerous team than the one that lost to St. Louis in double overtime in game seven.

Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic recently tweeted about Pavelski’s intentions of winning a Stanley Cup. His search is narrowed to two teams, the Tampa Bay Lightning, and the Dallas Stars.

As a part-time Lightning fan, I would love to see Pavelski play in Tampa. However, as a die-hard Blues fan, I want to see Pavelski as far away from the Enterprise Center as humanly possible.

We saw how great the Stars young talent was in the playoffs this year, and adding Pavelski to the mix of Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, and the youthful combination of John Klingberg and Miro Heiskanen would make the Stars a strong team for at least five years.

Now we get to everyone’s favorite Nashville Predators. Nashville has had an interesting start to their offseason, trading away superstar defenseman P.K. Subban to the Devils was a move that surprised a lot of people.

According to many reports, this was to make room for former Avalanche star Matt Duchene. Duchene split time with the Ottowa Senators and Columbus Blue Jackets last season and helped propel the Blue Jackets to a historic sweep of the Lighting.

Throwing Duchene with players like Flip Forsberg and Ryan Johansen would make the already elite Predators team, the favorites in the Central Division next season.

The Colorado Avalanche have already gotten better. They selected fourth overall in this year’s draft and selected defenseman Bowen Byram, who many believed the Chicago Blackhawks would take.

On top of having a top-five pick in the draft, the Avalanche recently acquired Andre Burakovsky from the Washington Capitals. Colorado may have the best player on the planet in Nathan MacKinnon, but what should scare Blues fans is their deep pockets.

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Look, the Blues just won the Stanley Cup and will bring back the cast and crew of that team. It will be hard to see names like Artemi Panarin and Pavelski go elsewhere, but it is important to remember that the Blues still have an excellent hockey team.

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