10 Years Later: St. Louis Blues Trade Nobody Will Ever Remember

10 years ago, the St. Louis Blues made a trade that altered their current franchise for the better. Almost nobody could tell you that trade occurred.

Ask any average St. Louis Blues fan how Vladimir Tarasenko came to be a member of the team and they would likely tell you through the draft. That is technically true.

St. Louis selected Tarasenko with the 16th overall pick. However, that pick did not originally belong to them.

The Blues original pick was the 14th overall pick. They used that to select Jaden Schwartz.

Schwartz has been a fantastic player for the Blues. Even 10 years later, we still believe he is capable of scoring 30 goals, but he’s been more than just a scorer for the team.

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Schwartz puts in a lot of hard shifts, doing dirty work that very few fans see. Nevertheless, his selection was not franchise changing.

The selection of Tarasenko was, to an extent. No, Tarasenko has not proven to be a top-tier goal scorer in terms of the NHL, but he has been a superstar for the Blues.

Tarasenko has averaged over 30 goals every season in which he was not classified as a rookie or injured. By today’s standards, that is pretty special and consistency you do not see that often.

Circling back to the point, though, very few likely know now and fewer in the future will remember it was actually a trade that put Tarasenko in a Blues jersey. St. Louis did make the pick, but the pick came via a trade with the Ottawa Senators.

Ottawa has been managed very strangely in spurts throughout the last 10-15 years, but what they were thinking here is anyone’s guess. The player that will be a footnote, trivia question, is David Rundblad.

Rundblad was a defensive prospect in the Blues system. He was drafted with the 17th overall pick in 2009, one year prior to this trade.

Clearly, as a first-round pick, Rundblad was thought highly of. He had a decent scouting report too.

"Rundblad is an offensive minded defenseman with very good size and puck skills. He has impressive vision and likes to move the puck into the offensive zone with slick stickhandling and good speed. Handles the puck with confidence and has very good poise. A great option from the blueline, where he releases a fairly accurate shot and also find his teammates with tape-to-tape passes. Size and strength is good.In his own end, Rundblad tends to not play it simple enough at times. He is a tad too creative and could also be more aggressive and determined in his play. If he develops his defensive game, he will be a high-scoring two-way defenseman. If not, he will still be a capable power play quarterback, but a potential liability in his own end. – Elite Prospects Scouting Report, 2010"

The old saying goes that hindsight is 20-20. That could not be more true here.

At 28, Tarasenko has played 507 NHL games and scored 214 goals. Both totals would be higher if he had not been injured in 2019-20.

Rundblad is 29. He has a total of 113 NHL games played, spread out among three NHL teams, and a grand total of 24 points.

Making matters worse, Rundblad only suited up for 24 games in a Senators sweater. He scored one goal and 4 points in 2011-12 before the Sens shipped him to Phoenix.

From a personal standpoint, Rundblad likely doesn’t care. He got enough games in the NHL to say he made it and continues to earn a living playing hockey in the KHL.

From an Ottawa perspective, this could not have gone any worse. You barely got any use out of the asset gained and the pick given up turned into a high-quality goal scorer, which is a precious commodity.

Perhaps Ottawa was over confident. They were coming off a 94 point season.

Daniel Alfredsson was still performing at a high level, scoring 71 points at age 37. The team also had a very young Erik Karlsson, so perhaps they thought they had the bones of a good team still.

Maybe they hoped Rundblad would pair with Karlsson and shore up a leaky defense that allowed more goals than they scored. Whatever the thinking, it turned out wrong.

The Blues won a Stanley Cup, in no small part, due to Tarasenko being on their team. He is not that transcendent leader, so he needed other pieces around him, but he was still a major cog.

Ottawa has all but been blown up. Karlsson is gone, Alfredsson eventually retired. Jason Spezza was lost via a weak trade. Rundblad never panned out.

Of course, there are deals that the Blues made that worked against them, so it doesn’t all turn out gold. Nevertheless, this is a trade that impacted the present and the future for the Blues and yet very few even know that it required a trade to happen.