The St. Louis Blues have a lineup full of players with no-trade clauses, and few of those clauses are of the modified variety. Although what general manager Doug Armstrong is doing makes sense in trying to make the lineup younger, he’s got one goaltender, four blueliners, and another four forwards on at least modified no-trade clauses.
And since the Blues weren’t necessarily a bad hockey team in 2023-24, there are only so many teams he can move these players to, which limits his options. Ideally, he would keep making the Blues as young as possible, but that may not be the best decision in 2024-25, so why not take the group that he has and win now?
Personally, I’d like to see Armstrong shed as much of the team as he can and keep making the Blues younger for head coach Drew Bannister, but considering the circumstances, it wouldn’t be the most feasible of moves. So instead, let’s get rather counterintuitive and propose three offseason transactions that may not make a ton of sense at the moment but, in actuality, wouldn’t be such bad deals.
Trade for Frank Vatrano
While it would be ideal to bring in the younger talent in Trevor Zegras, the older, more established Frank Vatrano would bring more upside to the Blues. Vatrano scored 37 goals last season, and that occurred with the lowly Anaheim Ducks, so imagine what he’d accomplish in a place with a halfway decent team like the one residing in Gateway City.
Sure, his successful year was an outlier from what he’d done in previous stops that included stints in Boston, Florida, and with the New York Rangers. But we must also remember Vatrano logged primarily middle and even bottom-six minutes until he came to Anaheim.
And it’s hard to truly call his successful 37-goal campaign too much of an outlier, as he also scored 22 in 2022-23. Throughout his time with the Ducks, that equals 59 goals in 163 games and 101 points, good for between 50 and 51 per season. Plus, 29 of those points also came on the power play, further justifying a potential trade for Vatrano.