Free agency can be a time when we see some eye-popping contracts get signed. Every summer, a player or two gets signed to a contract worth way too much money for far too many years--there were two candidates this year, depending on your feelings towards Ivan Provorov and Tanner Jeannot. Thankfully, the Blues don't often fall into the free agency trap, with one glaring exception.
Now, for the purposes of this exercise, we're only looking at cap-era contracts signed by unrestricted free agents; prior to the salary cap, the idea of a "bad contract" didn't really exist, because unlimited spending didn't require players to "live up" to anything. Navigating the salary cap is a difficult part of a general manager's job, and we're going to judge Doug Armstrong as such.
With all that out of the way, there's really only one signing that fits the criteria: Torey Krug.
In a vacuum, the Krug contract isn't a total disaster: the Blues needed an offensive defenseman, and Krug had three 50 point seasons under his belt as a Boston Bruin, the team the Blues defeated in the 2019 Stanley Cup Final. If the cap hadn't stagnated as a result of Covid, a $6.5-million AAV would've at least been palatable, though the seven-year term for a 29-year old undersized defenseman was a little puzzling--especially with a full No-Trade Clause the first five years and a Modified-NTC the final two.
There are layers to what makes the contract such a disaster, though. First and foremost, it's that Blues captain and No. 1 defenseman Alex Pietrangelo left in free agency for the Vegas Golden Knights that summer because an agreement couldn't be reached on a No-Move Clause for Pietrangelo--which Armstrong then, in part, gave to Krug anyway. Letting Pietrangelo walk was a colossal mistake.
The previous summer, the Blues had signed Justin Faulk to a massive extension that kicked in at the same time as Krug's contract. Faulk's inconsistencies made that deal a risk, and he's generally failed to live up to the cap hit. The Blues, going into the 2020-21 season, were short their star defenseman in Pietrangelo and tried to patch things up with a combination of Krug and Faulk at far higher cost than it would've taken to keep Pietrangelo in the fold.
Within two years, it became clear that the mix on the blue line wasn't working--so Armstrong handed out another $6.5-million AAV contract extension, this time to Colton Parayko, in September of 2021 before his current contract was even up. Then, in 2022 free agency, Armstrong signed Nick Leddy to a $4-million AAV, four-year contract to continue trying to patch up a messy defense core.
None of it really worked. You could say letting Pietrangelo go was the root of this disastrous series of events, but signing Torey Krug to that deal was the first link in a chain of other bad contracts. It wasn't until the Philip Broberg offer sheet and Cam Fowler trade last season that the defense group started to turn a corner, and hopefully new acquisition Logan Mailloux can become a top-four defenseman in the NHL, as well as a couple of prospects in the pipeline.
As it stands, Krug's playing days are likely over due to injuries, which was part of the risk of signing a small defenseman on the cusp of 30 to a long term deal. Hopefully, the Blues can navigate the cap for the final two years of his deal, because there's a chance that, in five years' time, Colton Parayko could take the dubious award for "worst Blues contract."