The 2025 free agency class has many intriguing names all across the board who will demand big contracts this summer. With reports of a rising cap and given how the market played out last season, this season will probably be another very player-friendly market with some elevated and unusual figures.
The Blues are entering a transition period where they have the chance to launch themselves back into not just playoff contention, but Stanley Cup contention once more if they push the right button. Signing a big-name free agent may seem like a simple solution to the problem, but this comes with serious reasons for concern that I contest is not a wise path to follow.
NHL free agency: the low-hanging fruit
The biggest flurry of excitement of every NHL offseason is the free agency period, where franchise icons and NHL journeymen alike get paid based on their merits and find a new home with another team.
The excitement of the news gets fans going and teams reacting, but it can be deceptive as to how impactful free agency moves truly are. Spending big money on individual players does acquire good talent, but it is not always the best allocation of resources.
The positives of free agency center around the caliber of players that are available year-to-year, which can vary. This means that expecting a free agent signing to come in and fill a hole on a roster is a strategy full of risks and pitfalls.
Free agency should be to add talent, not fill roster holes. Compromises may have to be made when trying to address needs on the roster, simply because the players available might not exactly match what the team needs.
Plus, the downside of handing out fully guaranteed contracts for long-term means they are going to be harder to move off of for the first few years if things don't work out. It is an investment for the short and the long term that comes with major risks on both ends.
A cautionary tale in Nashville
Last year, the biggest spenders in free agency were the Nashville Predators. They brought in three of that year's biggest free agent names: Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, and Brady Skjei.
In total, they committed $108.5 million and 21.5% of their cap space between the three star free agents. With the aforementioned rising cap, this is the new price of doing business in the NHL to bring in big-name free agents.
The Predators did not reap the benefits of their signings either, and instead quickly turned into one of the most disappointing stories in the NHL. With free agent signings come expectations, and an already aging roster with three older player additions left the Predators in a bad spot with no youth on the team to supplement and provide hope for the future.
Nashville paid big for name value and paid the price. Their example should be as clear as any why committing heavily to the free agent market is a strategy full of landmines.
Success comes from other places
If we compare with the rest of the NHL, it becomes more clear that spending big on free agent talent doesn't necessarily equate to success. Analyzing the best teams in the league reveals a different strategy.
The best team in the NHL right now is the Florida Panthers, and they built their team through one of the most creative processes in the modern NHL: utilizing waiver claims, RFA trades, and finally trading for complementary skill sets to find the perfect fit for what they needed. Florida did not spend to acquire talent; instead, they spent to keep it.
Their opponent in the Stanley Cup championship, the Edmonton Oilers, have take the draft-and-develop approach. Most of their key pieces were players drafted by the Oilers that they waited the long game for them to become stars, and only then did they start to spend and add supplementary talent; not talent to fill needs on the roster.
The more we analyze the league's best, the more this trend becomes relatively apparent. The class of the Western Conference right now is Dallas, Colorado, Winnipeg, LA, and Vegas, and each of those rosters has used a mix of draft-and-develop or strategic trades and extensions to build their core. There are more big spenders in the East, but the best teams right now still follow this model in Carolina, Tampa, Toronto, and Washington.
The St. Louis Blues would be wise to stay away from overcommitting to free agents this offseason. The league has plenty of cautionary tales and success stories alike who did not spend big bringing in talent, rather spending to keep their own.
Last offseason, Doug Armstrong built a playoff team once more, and it would be wise to keep that core intact. Certain players are due for extensions and will need to be paid, and losing them by reallocating their resources to an unknown free agent would hurt pretty badly.
I talked about these extensions and their potential value in the most recent episode of my podcast, the Note News Podcast, which you can find here:
Doug Armstrong has one more offseason to leave a lasting mark on the St. Louis Blues team, and he would be wise to avoid spending big on free agents this summer.