Reviewing the St. Louis Blues recent draft history

The St. Louis Blues have been the best Western Conference team since 2010. The stats back it up. According to StatMuse's database, the Blues are 5th in regular season wins and points percentage of all NHL teams and are the highest ranking Western Conference team on the leaderboard, trailing only Lightning, Capitals, Penguins, and Bruins.

It should be no question to Blues fans that the St. Louis Blues have been one of the premiere organizations of the last decade, being a consistently great team with very high expectations. This run of record success coincides directly with Doug Armstrong's tenure as GM of the St. Louis Blues.

Doug Armstrong has served as the general manager of the franchise since the summer of 2010, and has been with the organization for longer. His tenure has been, as previously mentioned, largely very successful. One of the consistent strengths of good teams with prolonged success is the ability to find talent in the NHL entry level draft.

This past summer, Armstrong and his team chose Czech defender Adam Jiricek, who is a prospect many are very high on and excited about. But how has Armstrong and his team fared in years prior?Taking a look at Doug Armstrong's draft record is an important part of understanding his legacy with the team.

2010-2013: The early years

With his first crack at leading the NHL draft day decisions, Doug Armstrong did have two chances with two first-round picks, at 14th and 16th overall. His selections? Jaden Schwartz and Vladimir Tarasenko.

With 385 and 553 career points for STL during their tenure, you don't need me to tell you these were great picks. What we can say about the draft is that Tarasenko has the 4th highest point total of all players drafted in 2010, and Schwartz comes in at 11th on that list. Pretty good start for Armstrong. The only other player to log NHL minutes was Jani Hakanpää, who never made the team with the Blues and instead signed years later with the Ducks after playing in Finland.

In terms of misses, some other notable picks chosen after the Blues two selections included Evgeny Kuznetsov, Tyler Toffoli, and Brock Nelson. Kuznetsov on the Blues certainly might have changed history significantly, but the other two had much longer paths to the NHL, so they aren't entirely 'misses'.

The last big miss of 2010 was Mark Stone, although this was not entirely Doug Armstrong's mistake. Stone fell all the way to the sixth-round until the Ottawa Senators finally selected him at 178th overall, so this is more of a mark on NHL scouting teams than a blemish on Armstrong's record.

In 2011, the St. Louis Blues did not have a first-round pick, so Armstrong had to find value on the margins. His solution? Two key components of the 2019 Stanley Cup Winning team: Joel Edmundson (round 2, 46th overall) and Jordan Binnington (round 3, 88th overall).

This year's list certainly has many familiar faces for fans of the NHL, but a lot of the best selections outside the first-round fell way out of the realm of every NHL team. Johnny Gaudreau (743 career points) fell to 104th overall in the fourth-round, and the Tampa Bay Lightning found the core of their dynasty in later rounds. They took Ondrej Palat (477 career points) in the seventh-round at 208 and Nikita Kucherov (873 career points, 2019 Hart winner) in the second-round at 58th overall. Kucherov is definitely a miss, but for one of the best players of this era to fall so far means that Armstrong is not the only general managers who wishes they could redo this draft.

2012 is a much less exciting class for the St. Louis Blues

The only NHLers with more than 50 games played include Mackenzie Maceachern (a depth forward, barely plays the 4th line) and Colton Parayko. One inspires more excitement than the other, to be certain.

Parayko was a real steal of the 2012 draft, however. Armstrong selected him in the third-round at 86th overall, so another value steal in the later rounds. Assembling great draft classes means finding great talent in later rounds, which so far Doug Armstrong has shown to be very effective at.

The St. Louis Blues first-round pick that year was Jordan Schmaltz, who has not really amounted to much. However, that year the Blues picked at the very back end of the first-round, at 25th overall. Outside of Brady Skjei who went three picks later, another notable NHL name does not appear until Jake McCabe at 44th overall or Damon Severenson at 60th overall.

In 2013, the Blues only had 4 picks: two second-round, one fourth, and one sixth-round pick. William Carrier is the only NHL player of these four, and while he's had a long career, it has not been the most exciting one yet.

2013 is a weird draft to look back on because outside of the first-round, the best players all come from the third-round (including Jake Guentzel and current Blue Pavel Buchnevich). Once again, a lot of talent slipped through the cracks of the NHL, and there were better selections to be made, but Doug Armstrong only had one shot before the best players were gone, so not a major blemish in my eyes.

2014-2017: Depth, depth, depth/Swindling the NHL

The 2014 draft made the mistake of giving Doug Armstrong and the St. Louis Blues 10 picks. And of these 10 selections, 7 went to make the NHL, and 5 are still around as everyday players. The 7 to make it were Robby Fabbri (1.21), Ivan Barbashev (2.33), Maxim Letunov (2.52), Jake Walman (3.82), Ville Husso (4.94), Austin Poganski (4.110), and Sammy Blais (6.176). Letunov and Poganski only played in a combined 25 NHL games, but the other 5 are all very successful draft picks, especially given where many of them were selected.

In 2015, the league may have learned from their mistake, so once again the Blues did not have a first-round pick. The two important players of the six selections Armstrong made were Vince Dunn and Niko Mikkola, both of whom played important roles on Stanley Cup winning teams (2019 and 2024 respectively).

The only real misses of this draft were Kirill Kaprizov and Troy Terry, both in the fifth-round. Two large misses in a 211 pick draft is still pretty good, especially if the Blues weren't the only losers of these sweepstakes.

2016 was a very top-heavy draft, with only Doug Armstrong's first two selections making the NHL. Those two players were Tage Thompson and Jordan Kyrou, two of the brightest young stars in the league, however. Additionally, the only misses better than these two were Adam Fox (3.66), Jesper Bratt (6.162), and Alex DeBrincat (2.39), but the context of the Blues two selections is important.

Kyrou is a young star the Blues are currently building around, and currently ranks as the 10th leader in scoring of that year's entire draft class. Tage Thompson was involved in a trade that brought the Blues their Conn Smythe winner, Ryan O'Reilly. Like I said, context is important.

The first selection of 2017 embodies everything about how this class feels: Robert Thomas. After Thomas came two future NHLers and depth players, Klim Kostin and Alexy Toropchenko. Their career arcs are not set yet, but for the time being they're playing their roles.

That being said, Robert Thomas was easily the best pick at that point in the draft at 20th overall, and ranks as the 4th highest career point total mark in the 2017 draft. And sure, Armstrong could have chosen someone like Jason Robertson with the 31st pick, but I think selecting a franchise center who looks to be playing close to a hall of fame pace and who is the core of the current St. Louis Blues should be considered a win.

2018-Present: Too early to tell

The only player from any Blues draft class since 2018 to play more than one season's worth of games is Jake Neighbours, who does look to be on pace for being a very successful pick. Neighbours is a special case, however. The next highest games played total is Scott Perunovich, who only has 73 career games played and is still carving out his role in the NHL.

There is a lot of upside and fun names with many of the pre-pandemic draft names, but their NHL careers are only just beginning and it is still difficult to grade their classes as a whole.

Some of these players drafted before the 2020 draft include the aforementioned Scott Perunovich, Tyler Tucker, Joel Hofer (all from 2018), and Nikita Alexandrov (2019). Additionally, Vadim Zherenko is a goalie who was chosen in 2019 that many prospect scouts are excited about as a player who could be an impact NHL goalie in the future.

Many draft classes post-pandemic feel very strange as a result of the global phenomenon, but there are still some fun names with serious promise from these classes that Doug Armstrong found. Matthew Kessel (5.150, 2020) is a young defenseman who is only just entering the league. Zack Bolduc (1.17, 2021) made his NHL debut last year and will have significant ice time this coming season.

Jimmy Snuggerud (1.23, 2022) is already making waves in NCAA hockey at Minnesota and is one of the most exciting prospects in the Blues system; Michael Buchinger (3.88, 2022) is a defenseman who looks like he might have a shot of making the NHL roster soon.

Dalibor Dvorsky (1.10, 2023) is one of the most exciting center prospects in the NHL and should be a very good player down the line; Otto Stenberg (1.25, 2023) and his Swedish teammate Theo Lindstein (1.29, 2023) have both made waves in international play and are progressing very rapidly towards making an NHL roster; Quinton Burns (3.74, 2023) and Juraj Pekarcik (3.76, 2023) are two more prospects who are progressing nicely in their own right and could get a crack at the NHL soon.

And the story of the 2024 draft class is only just beginning, but legitimately every pick Doug Armstrong made has been praised by some source or another, and all are very exciting prospects.

To conclude, Doug Armstrong's draft record is all but sparkling. The only major misses of his tenure were almost all misses that 31 other NHL teams made on very late round prospects that turned into all-star players.

But overall, the St. Louis Blues are the best Western Conference team since 2010 for a reason. Doug Armstrong's draft legacy should be considered a massive success, and has the chance to truly skyrocket with this year's draft class waiting in the wings.