St. Louis Blues: Blues Sign Troy Brouwer and Jamie McGinn to PTOs

It was just announced that the St. Louis Blues have signed Troy Brouwer and Jamie McGinn to professional tryout contracts.

The St. Louis Blues General Manager Doug Armstrong announced today that the team has signed Troy Brouwer and Jamie McGinn to professional tryout contracts. Will the Blues find something they are lacking on the team that one of these two can fill?

This is what I expect the Blues to do for now until a real big need rears its ugly head on the season. In a previous article, I touched on the rumor mill speculations and mentioned that with the team winning and the power play performing better than ever in a long time, there wouldn’t be much movement from the Blues in the trades category.

The Blues already said they plan on trying to fill the void left by Vladimir Tarasenko with a committee style approach and not going to make any big acquisitions right now. They made that clear prior to the current winning streak.

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The winning streak makes a trade all the more unlikely in the near future. So adding players via the PTO route is what I expect to see from the management unless we start to lose consistently and a real need presents itself.

Troy Brouwer last played for the Florida Panthers last season and had 21 points in 75 games scoring 12 goals and 9 assists.

Jamie McGinn played for the Panthers as well last year, but in only 19 games having scored 4 goals and 3 assists. This season he has suited up for 2 games in the AHL for the Charlotte Checkers.

Neither player is going to light up the scoreboard if they make the team on their tryouts, but both players play the same style of game that Blues coach Craig Berube expects out of all his players.

Heavy forechecking 200ft games. Blues fans will undoubtedly hope that Brouwer can make the club as he was integral in sending the Blues to the Conference Finals back in the 2015-16 season. If either player does make the team it will be interesting to me to see in what capacity they play.

Can either of these guys provide what Pat Maroon did for the club last season? Being on PTOs and reviewing what is a typical salary for a player signed off a professional tryout contract is around the $700 thousand dollars.

We signed Robby Fabbri only to trade him. Let Maroon go for $900 thousand dollars to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Only to maybe sign Troy Brouwer or Jamie McGinn to a $700 thousand dollar contract?

I get circumstances changed and all, but I don’t think anyone in Blue Bleedin fandom thought Fabbri was the better signing than Maroon. Maroon was a character guy and a puck possession beast in the offensive zone. He’s having some Maroon like success in Tampa and I’m happy for him. I wish he would’ve been signed here to do more of the same.