3 St. Louis Blues That Might Be Expendable/Traded Summer 2022

Jordan Kyrou

If you had brought up this idea last offseason, I’d have slapped you in the face. Even midseason, I’d have called you insane.

Jordan Kyrou was one of the untouchables. He is too young, too much talent with too much upside and could be a Blues lifer.

However, while you should never judge a player on a short stretch or just the playoffs, Kyrou took a nose dive. He quickly went from a name that should be a lock for top line or top six minutes to a guy that fans are willing to see packaged for another player.

For me, the disappointment and the change in my own perception came late in the 2021-22 season and into the playoffs. Kyrou shrank from the moment.

I don’t say that lightly. This is a talented man who just scored 27 goals and 75 points in a season where we still probably have not seen his best.

However, there were horrendous inconsistencies. He only managed five goals in his last 23 games, two of which came in one game.

His ice time would be over 20 minutes in one game and then below 15 minutes the next, proving he was not earning the trust of his coaches. The same was true in the playoffs.

Statistically, he was actually good. Four of his seven goals came against Colorado, which is exactly when you want a potential star to step up.

However, he had 11 minutes of ice time in Game 6 against Minnesota. He played less than 16 minutes on the ice in three of the six games against the Avalanche.

A lot came down to the eye test. Statistically, Kyrou was ok. His regular season turnover numbers weren’t terrible, nor were they worse than anyone else in the playoffs. Oddly, he actually led the Blues in takeaways in the 2022 playoffs.

But, for lack of a better way to put it, he was weak. He slunk away from the physical side of the game.

There were plenty of times against the Avalanche where he would duck away from hits. That’s fine to preserve yourself, but he would forget about the puck in the process. The phrase take a hit to make a play has merit, but if you’re going to duck the hit, you have to take care and keep the puck.

Kyrou was also incredibly weak on the puck in the playoffs. Perhaps his statistical giveaways were not high, but Kyrou had a lot of lost pucks.

I lost count of the times he would casually be skating up the wall and have his pocket picked in the neutral zone or in his own zone. You have to have positional awareness, especially in the playoffs.

There were too many shifts where he looked like a guy still playing junior style hockey, where he was the most talented one, against men. Kyrou is still very young and gaining experience, but he’s been to the playoffs enough to know things ramp up and he just felt unprepared.

Kyrou was definitely not the only one, especially against the Avs where St. Louis looked quite outmatched in several games. However, as much as I dislike the cliche, he was not playing Blues hockey and maybe he’s not going to be that style of player.

Nobody needs him to go run people down like Brayden Schenn or Ivan Barbashev. If you don’t have a little toughness and ability to be strong on the puck, then perhaps he can fetch a good enough haul to make a deal worth it.

I hate to give up on speed because speed kills. There’s not much room for speed in the playoffs though.