St. Louis Blues 2023-24 fourth line depth chart could be surprisingly strong
By Andy Knapp
The St. Louis Blues future depth chart had a rather quiet preview at the end of 2022-23, other than picking up Flyers star Kevin Hayes and resigning a few players that were set to become unrestricted free agents at the end of 23-24.
But after all of that, the Blues have seemingly added to an increasingly strong 4th line, having already locked in players like Jake Neighbours and Sammy Blais, in addition to bringing back previous 5-year Blues veteran Oskar Sundqvist from Detroit.
Alexey Toropchenko is the Blues’ latest addition, being signed for 2 years at $2.5 million. With all their work this offseason in picking up new players from the NHL’s version of an auction block, St. Louis’s cap sits at a total of $83.2 million, just $2 million from circumventing the league-wide cap limit of $85.2. They really had to squeeze in Toropchenko this year, didn’t they?
Now, besides Torp, other players the Blues locked in before this upcoming season to avoid a UFA mess at the end of said upcoming season include guys like Mackenzie MacEachern, a guy who’s been in the Blues system for the last couple of years with Springfield and spent last season as a member of the Carolina Hurricanes, despite not suiting up for them in 2022-23.
The 28-year-old winger returns to St. Louis with his third stint for the Blues, having played 115 total games for them since 2018-19. He’s logged 11 career goals and 8 assists for 19 career NHL points. Not bad.
Oskar Sundqvist could be key to St. Louis Blues having a strong fourth line
But Sundqvist is the more important guy here on the depth chart for the 2023-24 season. He started his NHL career in St. Louis, where over the first 5 years, he totaled 35 goals, 48 assists, 83 points, and all that was in 242 games played.
After spending a couple years each with Pittsburgh and then Eastern Conference rival Detroit (28 games, 1 goal, 3 assists for 4 pts with the Penguins; 70 games, 11 goals, 18 assists for 29 pts with the Wings) and 1 year in Minnesota (15 games, 3 goals, 4 assists for 7 pts with the Wild), he deserves a welcome home from the Blues faithful, as it’s all where he started what’s so far a decent NHL career.
Come training camp, the Blues’ 4th line depth chart could look at the very least, a little something like this:
- C Oscar Sundqvist
- LW Mackenzie MacEachern
- RW Alexey Toropchenko
- LW Sammy Blais
- LW Jake Neighbours
- LW Nathan Walker
- C Nikita Alexandrov
- C Zach Dean
Dean may be the outlier hear since he’ll spend the 23/24 season with the Blues’ AHL affiliate in Springfield. But just keep a lookout on the rest of these young potential stars- they could make an impact in just a couple of months from now. We’ll see just how jumbled around this tentative 4th line depth chart will get come about mid-October when the puck drops on the regular season.