St. Louis Blues Doug Armstrong Rearming His Naysayers

St. Louis Blues fans are still, even as the 2019-20 season has begun, basking in the glow of their 2019 Stanley Cup championship. However, the naysayers are rearming themselves with the team’s recent signings.

The St. Louis Blues just made a couple very interesting signings or re-signings, depending on your viewpoint. As most of you know, they gave rather lengthy contract extensions to newly acquired Justin Faulk and pending free agent Brayden Schenn.

As with any trade or signing, there were people on both sides. For the most part, there were very few fans that were up in arms by anything to do with either of these deals.

However, Doug Armstrong has quietly rearmed his detractors and naysayers by reverting to what got him in trouble with the public in the first place. Armstrong has done business the way it has to be done, but he has put the team in potential peril by the time these contracts come toward their end.

As said, the dollars and term given to Faulk and Schenn are just part of doing business in today’s NHL. Players are no dummies and they have figured out that their power lies in the fact they can take less money for longer term or demand higher dollars for fewer years.

Faulk turned his availability into a seven-year deal and Schenn got contract security for eight years. Both of them got their money, but on team-friendly deals that pay the players high amounts up front and much less toward the end – Faulk earns $9 million in the first year and $4.5 million in the last and Schenn will get $8 million his first year with it slanting down to $4 million in the last year. That gives the Blues a much easier to deal with cap hit of $6.5 million for both players.

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However, you would be hard pressed to find anyone that has any problem with the dollar amounts. If nothing else, Armstrong has worked some magic to get two players capable of being All-Stars – Faulk has been one – for less AAV than anyone was talking about prior. A lot of analysts were talking upwards of $8 million for Schenn, so that’s a savings of $1.5 million per season.

The issue becomes with the length. Armstrong set the Blues up for success by not giving out too many long-term deals that handcuffed the team regarding bringing up young players or dealing players away if that benefited the team.

The biggest problem with Armstrong, that apparently continues, is when he has to re-sign players. Though Armstrong was smart enough to not give a declining David Backes a long-term deal, he turned around and gave Alexander Steen a four-year contract back in 2017.

Steen was already declining in point totals, but the hope was his leadership and defending would continue to prove valuable. That did prove to be the case, however only because Craig Berube was able to get Steen to accept a fourth-line role. If that did not happen, we would have a cap hit of $5.75 million to a player who only scored 10 goals in 2018-19 and was a poor defensive player in the two years prior to that.

That kick in the behind is that Steen is still on the Blues’ books for another two seasons. His contract will not expire until the summer of 2021 and he will be 37 by the end of it.

The Blues will be right back in that same situation by the end of Faulk and Schenn’s deals. Both will be 35 or 36 by the end of their deals, depending on birthdates. That is dangerous to have that high a cap hit to players in their declining years.

Armstrong is not completely to blame. As mentioned, this is the price of business these days.

In a discussion I had, the other party questioned why they would not give five years. The issue is likely not that five years was not offered, but five years would have demanded an AAV of $7-8 million. $500,000 to $1.5 million might not seem like a lot, but it can mean the difference between signing a depth free agent/giving a shot to a rookie that has earned it or not.

Also, Armstrong is trying to give the team the best shot at winning he can and feels the current group of players does that. He did joke with Tom Timmermann and other reporters that he might be apologizing to a different GM by the time those deals come around, but the point is he has to worry about now and deal with later later.

“We have a lot of players from 25 to 30 that are in the real guts of their career,” said Armstrong in the Post-Dispatch, “and I felt it was our responsibility as an organization to Schenn and Tarasenko and O’Reilly and Pietrangelo and Parayko and that list to support that group. They’ve done everything we’ve asked over the past five or six years to be a very competitive team. . . . You never know what (the future is) going to look like, but I felt it was our responsibility and with the blessing of ownership to support that group that supported us for the last three or four years. They can see a reason to be here and want to be here for the next five or six years when we can be competitive.”

Still, it is a fine line. In a perfect world, the Blues would not have given out deals to anyone past age 32 just to mitigate the downward trend all players go through. However, if you do not take the risk, you may lose out on a player like Schenn or Faulk or others and those are top-line players at their peak.

"“We’re not abandoning the future of the franchise with these deals. We’re thinking it gives us a real good opportunity to be good for a long time, and we will have to address some of these things moving forward. . . . Ultimately I’d like to be good for six or seven years and if we have to deal with it then, we’ll deal with it then.” – Doug Armstrong in the Post-Dispatch"

The thing Armstrong is clearly hoping for is the jump in the salary cap. Most analysts thought it would go higher than the current $81.5 million for 2019-20, but it has still trended upward every season since the new CBA. With the TV contract expiring after 2021-22, a new, potentially more lucrative deal, might take the salary cap upward too.

Still, the issue is not how much money is being spent, but for how long. The Blues have had a mixed bag with lengthy deals. Steen has had plenty of ups and downs, with his stats trending downward as he nears the end of his deal. Fans had been ready to cast Jay Bouwmeester aside for years until he finally rebounded from his injuries in 2019.

Regardless of production at their age, fans are rarely willing to accept anything less when a player is getting paid a large amount. So, while these deals are good for now, the Blues could have plenty of issues by the end of those deals.

Next. 2019-20 full of possibility for Blues, good and bad. dark

Over the years, I have learned to trust Armstrong. After all, he is the only general manager to help bring a championship to the Blues.

That said, contract extensions have never been his strong suit. He has now rearmed those that had just stopped slinging arrows his way. While many of us are glad to have Schenn and Faulk and more around for a good while, we will see how long the Stanley Cup honeymoon lasts before these deals start being used against him.

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