St. Louis Blues: It Makes No Sense To Trade Vince Dunn Right Now

A lot of time in professional sports, the franchise does not do the right thing or waits too long to do it. The St. Louis Blues did not do that with Vince Dunn.

They needed to get him out of the lineup. The detraction of his defense and poor passing was outweighing his offensive ability by far.

However, both fans and media have taken that simple concept and jumped one or two steps beyond it. While a previous article on the idea was titled the Blues need to give up on Dunn, it was meant give up on continually trotting him out there, not give up on him entirely.

Somehow, that’s where that got taken in a hurry. The simple fact of putting Dunn on the healthy scratch list led to him being mentioned as a trade rumor in almost every single Metropolitan Division team and a couple Canadian teams as well.

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The amusing thing was to watch the domino effect of it all. An article came out stating the Philadelphia Flyers would have interest.

Almost immediately after, an article stated that if the Flyers were in, the New York Rangers needed to show interest. The Boston Bruins were next up on the Dunn train.

The problem is that the Blues should have no interest in trading Dunn, unless something very attractive got set on the table. The Blues are deep on the blue line from a talent perspective, but not so much from an experience perspective.

So, why discard Dunn now? That’s a lot of faith being shown to guys who might not have earned it yet.

As a fan, I have no issue with the idea of giving more ice time and responsibility to Niko Mikkola. Other than the idea of burning a year of his entry-level deal, I don’t have issue with letting Scott Perunovich get a few games.

The flip side of that is that neither have been through a North American style playoff system, much less the intensity of the NHL playoffs. Do you really want only potential with no fallback option come playoff time?

What about injuries? We’ve already seen how one injury to a third-line defenseman in Robert Bortuzzo threw the balance completely out of whack.

Pick up one more injury and you’re suddenly in a world of trouble. Then, you’re using guys you had no intention of putting on the taxi squad, much less the NHL roster.

The contract/cap aspect has to be taken into account too. While Dunn is relatively cheap at just over $1.8 million for this season, that does not give the Blues much room to bring anything back.

The Blues could use Dunn to recoup some of the draft capital they’ve traded away. Even then, that’s never wholly satisfying because hockey players take years to develop.

Trade Dunn for even a low-round first round pick and you won’t see that guy in the NHL for three years. Trade him for a current prospect and it’s still somewhat of a coin flip as to whether that works out. Trading for an NHL player is almost impossible because the salaries would have to be almost identical.

The Blues were 100% right to bench Dunn. A message needed to be sent that his play was not at the level it needed to be, especially when other players had been sat for far less.

However, a trade just does not make much sense right now. St. Louis should wait until the offseason and see if they can trade his rights at the draft, or even as part of some package with Seattle at the expansion draft.

Husso has not been good, but he's not at fault either. dark. Next

We should expect Dunn to stay with the Note for this season though.

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