St. Louis Blues: 3 Reasons Not Acquiring Jakob Chychrun Was Good
Now that the 2022 NHL trade deadline has passed for the St. Louis Blues, fans can get back to what they do best – blaming the goaltending for everything. I kid, though only partially.
In reality, the dust has settled and we can settle back into reality. I’m one of the few people that actually prefers that.
It is fun to fantasize about new players coming into your team, almost like trading player cards to make a fantasy team. However, more often than not, we all get caught up in that fantasy world and reality isn’t at all what we hoped.
Maybe not the majority, but there were a lot of Blues fans that got their hopes bound up in a deal for Jakob Chychrun from the Arizona Coyotes. With no insider information, I still maintain that was probably a pipe dream, but there had to have been interest from the Blues. There was too much reporting involving the Blues name for Doug Armstrong not to have kicked the tires at all.
Ultimately, the deal did not happen and St. Louis picked up Nick Leddy. He’s still a good player with tread left on the tires, to keep the theme going, but he’s a few steps down in talent and a few steps up when it comes to age.
Nevertheless, the Blues were right not to acquire Chychrun now (maybe ever? We’ll see on that). That statement has little to do with his injury status either.
There are three key reasons the Blues were right to not take on the Coyotes big asset.
Contract
When you read many of the articles talking about why acquiring Chychrun was a good idea, many of them point to his contract. That’s a short term solution.
It is true that $4.6 million for a top pairing defenseman at 23 years old is a good deal. It was not a rental option either since his contract runs through the summer of 2025 when he would be 26, at least.
There’s two main issues with that contract that seems good right now. The main one is that you’d have a ton of money tied up on your blue line.
Assuming Chychrun was brought in to only be an addition to the current group, you would have your top four defenders all under contract through 2025. With Torey Krug, Colton Parayko and Justin Faulk all getting $6.5 million, you would be paying $24.1 million to four players.
Those are all good players, but none of them are going to score you more than 15 goals or so, on their best years. That’s a lot of money tied up.
Most analysts would agree that Chychrun’s deal is a steal now. That means, when he’s 26 and just entering his real prime, he’s going to want a big raise.
Faulk and Krug’s deal run through 2027. Parayko’s deal is through 2030.
Faulk and Krug are 30 now and those contracts would be hard – not impossible – to move right now, unless a team is looking for veteran help. They’ll become harder to trade later on.
By the time Chychrun’s contract would need to be renewed, he’s going to want Alex Pietrangelo money or more. The Blues were smart not to spend that then and it wouldn’t make sense to turn around and spend it this time around.
Chychrun is a very good player. He’s not yet a transformative player that alters your team’s chances of winning a Stanley Cup by himself and may never be. That begs the question of whether he’s worth the money.
If you make the argument he’s worth the money, and it’s not an invalid argument, the fact remains it would have been hard to make the deal.
The Blues are up against the salary cap. Maybe there was a way to use LTIR to make it work and maybe not, but the reality is the Blues would have needed to find a way to move $4.6 million off the books for right now.
Completely removing the potential raise Chychrun would need later, the Blues had to match what they sent out with what they brought in. Leddy had 50% of his contract retained by Detroit, meaning the cap hit for the Blues matched exactly what they sent out with Oskar Sundqvist’s contract.
To free up $4.6 million, you’re talking trading a player like David Perron or Brandon Saad. To avoid that, you’d probably still need to trade out Sundqvist along with someone like Ivan Barbashev or Marco Scandella.
That would free up the dollars, but then you’re thin as far as the roster you can dress every night. It would have caused a lot more problems than most realize.
Holding on to assets
In today’s society, really just in human nature, we want things now and we want them how we want them. When it comes to sports, we want that shiny new toy and we want the Stanley Cup.
The future be damned, get us what we want right now. That’s not smart for the long term.
It worked for the Chicago Blackhawks, who won three Cups in six years and their fans may think it’s worth it. You’ll have to ask them in two or three years when they’re just starting to sniff the playoffs again.
For every Chicago or early to mid-2000’s Detroit, there’s a Vegas. Vegas has spent and spent and spent and put themselves in cap hell where they have to trade off good, young pieces and acquire dead contracts just to afford the overpriced talent they’ve stockpiled. Frankly, they’re further away from a championship right now than they were when they were a bunch of motivated second and third liners that nobody wanted.
Honestly, the Blues were smart to hold on to their assets. Who knows how draft picks turn out, so I’m not even talking about that since the Blues have made their franchise based on mid-round guys.
However, there’s talent in the pipeline that may not be NHL ready right away, but not everyone is. Jordan Kyrou went from looking like the next Robby Fabbri to someone who could be a top-10 scorer if he reaches his full potential.
Jake Neighbours earned a spot on this team right out of camp. Really, the only reason he didn’t stay with the Blues is because it made more financial sense to not let his pro contract kick in yet and have him under control an extra year.
Zachary Bolduc has 11 goals and 18 points in his last 10 games. EliteProspects projects him to finish with 40-plus goals and over 90 points in this junior season.
I’m not ready to give up on that for an offensive defenseman.
Is he really better?
There’s not a lot of doubt that Chychrun is a very good NHL player. How good is mostly up to the eye of the beholder.
My question is really how much he would have improved the Blues. Would he improve them more than Nick Leddy? Based on talent alone, yes, but it’s not always about talent. It’s about what you bring to the team.
The Blues already have similar players. In terms of production, he’s not that much better than Faulk or Krug.
I can already hear the people balking at this, but the numbers bear it out.
Compare Chychrun’s first six seasons to Krug. Chychrun has actually played more games and more minutes, but has fewer points. Chychrun has more goals but not by a large margin. Power play goals are just about the same.
The same is true for Faulk compared to Chychrun. Even if you adjust the difference in amount of games played during their first six seasons, Faulk scored about 161 points and 55 goals in 337 games. Chychrun had 53 points and 142 actual points in those amount of games.
Proponents of the deal will point to him playing on a bad team. I’ll counter by saying his points should actually be higher on a bad team.
He’ll be asked to be more defensively responsible and play within a system on a team like the Blues. Arizona is pretty much letting him do whatever he wants because he’s probably their one of their best, or at least in their top three or four best players.
The Blues needed grit, size and defensive ability. Chychrun isn’t small at 6’2, but he’s not known for clearing out the front of the net.
He’s not a big time shot blocker, though he’s not bad. For comparison, his block totals are significantly lower than Alex Pietrangelo, he has a slightly higher average hit total than Petro did and nobody really confused Petro for Chris Pronger when it came to getting nasty.
The reality is the Blues need complimentary players. They need a ying to the yang they already have.
No matter what we want him to be, Colton Parayko is not going to transform into Chris Pronger, nor Al MacInnis. He is what he is.
Jay Bouwmeester worked well with him because they both had enormous reach and Bouwmeester covered while Parayko went forward. Chychrun is too much like Parayko, Faulk and Krug.
Even if you tell them to be defensive minded, they’ve based their game and their earning ability behind putting points on the board. They’ll try their hardest to fit roles and listen to advice from the coaches, but it’s about as likely as transforming Vladimir Tarasenko into a body checking machine.
Lumping it all together, you’re spending a boat load of money on talented players, but you’d still have the defensive issues you entered this trade deadline with.
None of this is bashing Chychrun either. He’s just not really what was going to fix this team’s problems.