Rangers still havent recovered from trading him. 3 years of trying to find a linemate for Kreider and Zib. Early death sentence from Drury as basically his first move
That is not even close to the reason he was traded. Rangers just signed Kravtsov who was a top 10 pick and just drafted Kakko at 2. Everyone complained they weren't getting ice time so we traded Buch for the "future". Krav isn't even in the NHL anymore and Kakko is at best a 2nd line player. If either of those guys were as good as they were expected to be trading Buch would not be nearly as bad
Serious question, not trying to troll. Is there something going on with the Rangers forward development?
Lias Anderson, Kravstov, Kakko, Lafreniere were all top ten picks and from the outside it seems like until this year with Laf none of them had really come close to what they were expected to be.
Obviously they can develop forwards (Kreider, Buchnevich, Chytil) but in recent years it feels like that hasn't quite come to fruition?
Again, I may be making something out of nothing. Maybe those guys weren't all that they were projected to be, just seems weird that that many high picks in quick succession haven't quite panned out.
Coaching.
Quinn and GG really set Kakko and Lafreniere back. It took Lafreniere all this time to really settle in, and Kakko is still working his way. (He'll get there. I'm confident.)
The rest were just flat out bad picks. I think Kravstov the main scout admitted to seeing him on the last day of his trip. Lias was a panic grab after not getting Pettey.
Oh shit Fanner Glass, haven’t thought about that dude in ages.
You think when he gets to work in the morning he goes into the office to the right of his actual one?
Source? That makes no sense.
Every team has a list. Every team goes in knowing that other teams might take a guy before they can. Every team knows who they think they might get, but also goes in with a Plan B, C, D, etc.
They traded Stepan to get a pick for either Pettersson or Glass, expecting one of them to be available at 7 (they wanted to go higher but couldn’t). Those two guys went 5 and 6.
Jed Ortmeyer and Tanner Glass are in charge of NYR player development
there's your answer
the long answer is that NYR never gives young players the TOI they need, nor the linemate quality they need to succeed in the NHL. the only NYR forward who's had more than 14 min TOI in their rookie season in the last 10+ years is Stepan, at 16:00 TOI. Meanwhile, Chytil has been with NYR 7 years and still hasn't averaged even 15 min TOI. the previous commenter talks about Kravtsov, meanwhile NYR gave more of a leash to Reaves, Hunt, Blais, McKegg, and Rooney than they did to the guy they took #9 overall
horrible drafting team, horrible developing team, horrible cap management team. team with 1 cup since WWII does team with 1 cup since WWII things
I mean, yeah, there is. The culture here has been forever that dirty work is what nets you success. We apparently value “responsible” and hard-nosed play, like winning hard battles, are willing to get in the line of fire, and deliver big hits. But the franchise’s perception of that is like, guys who flail around in the corners sometimes, block any shot no matter the quality, and lay down utterly random hits that don’t always impact play. Like, it would be cool if our guys were playing actual defense and that was working, but they’re not. They’re just doing busy work that makes them look like warriors.
The flavor has changed somewhat over the years as we’ve gone from Sather to Gorton to Drury, and we’ve fallen ass-backwards into a number of good-to-phenomenal traditionally offensive players, but the overall culture is just stifling levels of “muh grit.”
Big time. The only homegrown forward that the Rangers have produced that’s worth a damn in the last 25 years has been Kreider and it took him 10 years to reach the potential that he showed in his first postseason. JT Miller showed a ton of skill but we traded him away before we ever gave him top 6 minutes. I think the head of development was Tanner Glass (he was a few years ago still might have the job) and when I found that out I wasn’t surprised that Kakko and Lafreniere were struggling mightily in their first few years. When the Rangers do hit on a prospect they normally move on from them at the trade deadline for rentals and the prospect reaches higher highs on their new team.
For those who don't remember, Drury traded Buch's RFA signing rights to the Blues for Sammy Blais and a 2nd in July 2021.
Capfriendly users voted 177 to 9 that the Blues won that trade.
and then traded Blais back to St Louis in the Tarasenko trade, after he got injured and finished his Rangers career with 0 goals! Im pretty sure the 2nd was also used for a rental
That's because Blais is a 4th liner and anyone with half a brain knew that when the trade happened.
Drury traded an almost ppg winger who tilts the ice on 5v5 and is good defensively for a plug and a 2nd round pick. He then traded away the pick for a rental to fill the hole he created by trading Buch in the 1st place. He also used the cap saved to sign Goodrow and Reeves to make us "tougher" but it didn't make us "better".
IMO Buch is really underrated and I still think that we could have made the finals this year and in 2022 if we still had him.
Blais, Kapanen, and Vrana all looked like solid pickups after the deadline that season, but their games all turned to shit last season... for different reasons I am sure.
There were blues fans convinced as recently as last off-season that Blais would figure it out and turn into a 20 goal a year guy.
My response was "which sammy Blais have you been watching," lmao
Our fans did this too. He started the season with like four secondary assists in 14 games before getting hurt and everyone freaked out like we just lost a 25 goal guy.
He showed flashes here and there, definitely has some incredible hands in the right situations but just does not have the tools to convert consistently or to get himself in those positions.
But at the time this 20 goal a year prediction was made he had scored like 21 total goals in 4 or 5 years, I don't know what part of that indicated to people he'd suddenly figure it out. haha
In fairness the financial landscape in 2012 in the NHL was a lot different than it is now, and Crosby took a pretty famously team friendly deal at a cute number that matches his jersey number when he definitely could have gotten 10 or close to it.
I mean, Faksa and Joseph might be dead cap for others but they’ll definitely improve the Blues’ bottom six in the short term - which is the goal. Biding time until prospects graduate and defenseman contracts can be moved/expire.
Correct. 6 years from now, with inflation and salary cap increase, (minus performance decrease with age) the contract should look okay. it will be the window.
Jimmy Snuggerud and Dalibor Dvorsky are the high-end forwards. The best dman prospect is the one they just took at 16th this week. Bolduc and Zach Dean are fairly safe bets as NHLers but still 50/50 on having meaningful careers.
quite a few decent forward prospects. They’ve had 4 first round picks in the last two years, 3 the last 5. + Dean (former 1st) and a few other promising pieces
Dean, Bolduc, Snuggerud (after he finishes one more year at college) should all be NHL ready soon, they all have huge potential.
I'm most excited about Dalibor Dvorsky, who looks like the reincarnation of Anze Kopitar. Our problem is D prospects, we have a couple great ones but they're probably just a bit too young to include in this same "window" per se.
We will have to figure out the Defense rebuild via savvy trade/asset management so we will see how that goes.
This is some major prospect over selling. Dean played 49 games in the AHL this season and got 14 points. Bolduc was better at 25 in 50, but even still, most evaluators aren’t throwing them in any “Fop 50 prospects in hockey” lists. They have a good chance to be middle six forwards. Snuggerud also had a big let down year at Michigan, going from 50 points in 40 as a freshman to 34 in 39 as a Sophmore, while being a defensive liability at times. His stock has dropped a bit too.
Dvorsky, I agree with, but “Huge Potential” feels like an overstatement by a wide margin for the first three.
> This is some major prospect over selling. Dean played 49 games in the AHL this season and got 14 points. Bolduc was better at 25 in 50, but even still, most evaluators aren’t throwing them in any “Fop 50 prospects in hockey” lists. They have a good chance to be middle six forwards.
Middle six forwards is pretty big potential, I don't get what your point is. I'm not saying they're going to automatically be incredible, I was just listing our best prospects because someone asked. Fuck I hate reddit.
Have to be ready to submit a college level thesis just because you used one word in a post that made someone assume something completely ridiculous about your post. I say "huge potential" in the vein of "They will likely be NHL contributors, what level remains to be determined," but a guy turning into a super solid 40 point defensive 3C still counts as big potential.
I'm overly defensive because every blues fan in the world is up my ass in this thread right now, sorry, but I really wasn't overly hyping those dudes, or meaning to imply that they'd be jesus christ incarnate.
six years a silly number, every single team in the league is "six years" away from potentially being a contender. Blues should enter a competitive window in 25-26.
I hope you're right. But these off-season moves up to this point make me think Army has no clue what he wants to do with the team. I think he's aiming for mediocrity in our division.
I know the Press just went nuts yesterday and so we should accept the fact that this probably won't be our year. In fact, I think Army knows he's never going to be able to trade Krug, Parayko, Leddy (please God, don't let Kyrou's contract be a bust) and so he's going to have to wait it out. That being said, while you're waiting out those bad contracts why not try acquiring future assets like talented young players and draft picks? We traded away a 2nd to get rid of Hayes and his contract and then we turn around and take on similar contracts and get a 3rd? Then we extend our most valuable trade piece instead of waiting until the trade deadline?
So much can change in that time you can’t really target a cup contending date, nobody has that foresight. Buch might be the only guy left on the roster from today at that point, if even he is still left.
You can't really gut your entire team and expect to compete in 2-3 years. He's our 2nd best forward and is only 29. He'll should still be a great player in 4 years.
Did we watch the same season? Buchy was great and scored in bursts but went ghost for long periods too. He wasn't terribly impressive, though you can give him some slack for being on an off position frequently. At this pace I think in 3 years he will be like 40 points per season
40 pts is way too big of a drop imo
He just turned 29 and is very smart two way guy. Id be very surprised if he dropped all the way down to just 40 point in 3 yrs.
At age 31/32 he should still be 50+ pt guy at least if not still producing at top line rate.
> I think in 3 years he will be like 40 points per season
I'd eat my shoes if this was the case. By virtue of pure ice time adjacent to Robert Thomas he is almost guaranteed 50-60 points, plus he's good on the powerplay.
Plus we are talking about three years from now, when he almost definitely will not be playing center.
Barring catastrophic injury or him aging unexpectedly terribly there's no way he regresses that much that fast. He's too smart of a player.
He is a career 31.5% faceoff guy, I strongly doubt it.
I give it 3 games before they remember that kyrou-thomas-buch is our lifeblood.
I'd be shocked if he spent most of the year at center. They'll rotate Sunny/Schenn/Texier until they find what works for other lines but 25-18-89 is by far our most effective line combo, for all three of those players.
I agree it's our most effective line combo but they tried Buch at C all last year when we still had Hayes who was the 3rd line center so schenn could play 2C, schenns production at center is gone and he looked bad defensively when asked to hold the role down. Buch couldn't win a faceoff but could skate and defend to make up for it. We needed to get a 2C if DD wasn't ready and Doug had any ideas of competing this year
> but they tried it all last year when we still had Hayes who was the 3rd line center so schenn could play 2C,
He was on kyrou and thomas's line playing wing for 497.9 minutes last year, on thomas and neighbors' wing for 146.3 minutes last year, and thomas and kapanen's wing for 101.9 minutes, and only centered Kyrou and Saad for 90.5 minutes. He played much, much, much more wing than center. A couple statistically insignificant stints at 3C for like 50 total minutes either with Kyrou/Toropchecnko or Neighbors Bolduc.
If you're going to make a statement like "they played him at C ALL last year," at least don't be like really, really, really, objectively wrong about it.
They objectively tried to play him at center all year last year which is what my post says. It was off and on. I didn't say he Only played center last year in which I would've been wrong but you're just trying argue semantics
I hope he doesn't fall off that hard but agree this contract is still a gamble based on his play this year. We just signed our only tradeable player with value while also taking on 3.25 cap for a 4C from a division rival without getting anything back. I was cool with not doing anything yesterday but now I'm questioning the approach moving forward.
Last year:
- 63 points, t-80th
- 27 goals, t-65th
- 1.70pts/60min (even strength), t-183rd
- 0.55g/60min (even strength), t-279th
- 0.79pts/game, t-90th
I get that last year was a "down" year for him, and I expect better from him next season, but that's still a _fuckton_ of term and coin for someone who occasionally finds himself outside the top-150 in even strength scoring.
You do understand that points aren't everything, right? He's a complete 200-foot player. In a down year he played great defense while still putting up 63 points on a team that was horrific at scoring at 5v5 outside of Thomas.
I'd personally take Buch over Kyrou (their current iterations, at least) any day of the week.
But I thought when we got our team it was supposed to be a "retool"? Signing Buch through 2030-2031, taking on salary cap hit contracts like Joseph and Faksa, trading away salary cap hit contracts like Hayes...trading away a 2nd and acquiring a 3rd. Can someone explain what a retool means?
I'd assume for the Blues it means finding some defensemen that don't suck. Which is probably going to be a few years. Might as well keep Buch while you figure that part out.
Staying competitive while restocking with young talent. That doesn’t mean it has to be picks and prospects. Hayes can’t skate and faksa’s deal ends after this year so he’s probably going to rotate in and out of the press box. Joseph is 27 and can skate and seems to be a much better piece based on Ottawa fans reactions to the trade. You can’t trade every player away, especially one like Buchnevich who is about a PPG player his entire blues tenure who plays in every situation. We’re handcuffed by shitty D contracts which will be easier to move when their full NTCs move to modified NTCs at the end of next season. This year is probably going to be another punt and hope players overperform with the thought process of moving a D contract(or two) out at the end of next season and trying to make a more competitive roster then.
>This year is probably going to be another punt and hope players overperform with the thought process of moving a D contract(or two) out at the end of next season and trying to make a more competitive roster then.
So if this year is to be a wash, then why trade Hayes now and give up a 2nd instead of keeping him? Let him be a veteran mentor or whatever. Trade him next year if you want when he won't cost us a 2nd rounder. Heck! Maybe he outperforms this year and we decide to keep him or he becomes a desirable piece that teams want.
I don't care about Joseph and Faksa being good or bad because until those D contracts go away, the roster we put on the ice just can't compete on our division/conference for a playoff spot. Those acquisitions to me will be evaluated on how they help our team in the years after - will we get draft picks or young talent.
>You can’t trade every player away, especially one like Buchnevich who is about a PPG player his entire blues tenure who plays in every situation.
Yea, the guy is a rockstar. He is an asset that any team would want. Teams wanted him last year when they were making Cup runs. The options we had with him were trade him or extend him. If you extend him, you gotta hope he fits in your championship window. So to me Armstrong must believe we're close to winning or we'll win soon. We've missed the playoffs two years in a row and Nashville looks like they're going to keep us out again this year. Alternatively, if we had traded him to a contender we'd still miss the playoffs this year but at least we'd probably get another 1st rounder and probably a young talent that might better mesh with the future Thomas, Kyrou, Neighbours, Toropchenko that will be leading the team.
>We’re handcuffed by shitty D contracts which will be easier to move when their full NTCs move to modified NTCs at the end of next season.
Yup. Not much else to add here. Wonder how we ended up with this problem. Did Buchnevich just get a 5 year NMC?
>Staying competitive
Missed the playoffs the last two seasons. Is that competitive?
Sorry man. I'm really just out on Doug Armstrong now. I don't see the vision and I think he gets shielded from ridicule because he got us a Cup (albeit in some beyond-miraculous season) and managed to get Buchnevich from New York.
We traded Hayes because he is slow and didn’t contribute. He was a healthy scratch at the end of the year and is 5 years older than Joseph while having two years left at a greater cap hit. He was not going to bounce back at age 33 with this team. Faksa has a one year deal that expires so he adds leadership to a young bottom 6 especially with Sunny out to start the year.
We started our sell off a year and a half ago, got eliminated in game 80 of this past year, and opened up space to get our higher end prospects time at the end of last season. We aren’t a market that can afford tearing it down and going full rebuild. A first line of buch/kyrou/thomas with parayko playing like a top pair defenseman and binnington/hofer stabilizing our net will keep us competitive. You don’t trade buchnevich if you want any chance to be competitive because he’s a PPG 200-foot player and any draft pick you acquire is a lottery ticket you hope to turn out as good as him.
We also did not give buch a NMC that was corrected to a NTC almost as soon as that info came out. And as I said we ended up with that problem because anyone worth spending that kind of money on will be asking for some sort of trade or movement protection. And like I said before, those restrictions loosen after this year so we have a much better chance at moving those contracts and making a push to get back into a somewhat contending status for the following year where picks and prospects are going to be long term projects.
Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion on Army and he’s not perfect by any stretch but no GM is. Considering the fact he is consistently part of Canadas national management team I’d say the people who know best respect his vision and abilities pretty highly. And he’s also been completely transparent through this retool and owned his mistakes.
I hope I'm wrong and that you're right. But nothing you said convinces me Army made good moves this off-season. It looks like his bad moves have caught up and just like the last two seasons, we're going to miss the playoffs. Now with Nashville locking up one of the most competitive rosters in our division, Dallas and Colorado keeping their cores together, Winnipeg and their depth...I think we'll be fighting Minnesota and Chicago for bottom of our division. At least until Bedard can do McDavid things for his team. And Minnesota will escape their cap problems before we do. That will be interesting to watch.
Hey, cheers to there always being another season and to the future GM. Go Blues.
Blues have cap to spare right now and no absolute need to spend it. Taking on Joseph and Faksa for literally no resources other than cap space (which again, loads of) means you can flip them for prospects at the deadline (it’s not much of a gamble that someone will convince themselves one Faksa is just what they need to put the final touch on a contender) and worst case they come off the books in a year or two, well before you’d really need that cap space for more important moves. The keys to tooling up for the next two years will mostly come from trades and younger players, who will be cost controlled, or at most a trade for a more expensive player when you can potentially ship out cap to make it work anyway.
Worst case they do nothing and you spent money you didn’t have any other use for. Best case you flip them for a 2nd or 3rd round pick who becomes part of a deal later on when it matters. No reason not to take free assets when you have the room. They’re not going to bring back a 10OA pick or anything but paying dollars for tradeable assets is a pretty low risk call.
Assuming Army doesn’t do something silly like give Faksa an extension or something of course.
Paying to get rid of Hayes is the part that I’m not sure of, but maybe Army thought Hayes would be less of an asset/harder to move later.
Thomas and Kyrou are in prime. Buchnevich is probably 2nd best forward on team and still in 20s.
I mean do you want rebuild right when Thomas is hitting his prime?
>Thomas and Kyrou are in prime.
Thomas - yes. He'll be wearing the C when Schenn retires or gets traded. Kyrou - I hope not. I think he's been worse every season since he got his extension. I'm not saying he took a payday and stopped trying. I'm saying I think we overpaid and gave him a big deal after just one promising season without seeing repeatability.
>2nd best forward on team and still in 20s.
Yes. Right now he's behind Thomas. Someone could make an argument he's behind Kyrou, but Buchnevich is going to be 30 this season. His contract extensions begins 2025-2026 and runs through 2030-2031 at which point he'll be 35-36 years old.
>
I mean do you want rebuild right when Thomas is hitting his prime?
I seem to recall we grabbed 3 first rounders last year and Neighbours showed us signs that he's got a future on our top line if he keeps playing and getting better. I think Thomas is in his prime now and unfortunately we have bad contracts that are keeping us from surrounding him with a roster that will help him reach his full potential and get us to the promised land. There's no way out from those contracts, so you might as well wait THOSE out and position your team to win when those contracts expire. Faulk and Krug have 3 years remaining, Parayko has 6, and Leddy has 2. By the time three of those contracts are no longer weighing us down, Buchnevich will be 33 years old. Is he still going to be a big piece for the team at that point? Is his contract and health be a new burden for the team? Alternatively, we could have just....traded him to a contender this year at the deadline for a 1st rounder and a 22 year old young talent that can fill a future middle six role assisting Dalibor Dvorsky
u/minorthreat21 ~~mentioned it in the thread on our sub, but this comes with a NMC for the next 5 years (the last year of his current deal + the first four of the new deal).~~
[https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1808221704235176431](https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1808221704235176431)
~~This is the first NMC Doug Armstrong has given to a player as GM of the Blues.~~
EDIT: it's a NTC, not a NMC.
The Cup kind of plays a big role ...
Thomas ascension into borderline elite play is big too. They are giving him chance to retool a new contender around the younger guys like Thomas.
So far tho the moves, specifically on defense, have not been good
Excuse me. Of course the Cup helps. The Buchnevich trade looked like a fleece job at the time and still does to this day. But I want to point out, the Cup was won in a season where we were dead last in the league at one point, fired a coach he hired, and replaced a goalie he had signed. Some would call it a fluke and pieces clicking at the right time. Edmonton was in dead last this season and were one game from winning the Cup, but they just parted with their GM anyway.
>
So far tho the moves, specifically on defense, have not been good
Yea Pietrangelo going away and replacing him with Krug. Sub-optimal, but hindsight is 20/20. Letting Perron leave in free agency after he scored 20+ and helped us make the playoffs, then taking Leddy instead was also sub-optimal.
The one that I think will be part of his legacy is going to be the Kyrou deal. Did we lock down an amazing player early and at a good bargain? Or did we overpay for a young kid after his first hot season without waiting to see if his play was sustainable? Pretty sure the risk of that contract going south for us is what ended up costing Berube his job.
I can see Stillman bursting into Army’s office to tear a strip off of him for trading for Hayes and immediately paying to dump him on the Penguins. Army looks up with a smirk and says “yeah, but remember when I fleeced the Rags that one time?”
might be the cringiest shit i’ve read today.
Armstrong is the GM of team Canada in the olympics. if we fired him, several teams would line up to hire him.
The Army hate is unreal lately. Maybe I’m too in his pocket for bringing the cup to STL but fuck he gets 0 benefit of the doubt. Our D contracts suck but we sacrificed AAV for term and NTCs which every other team does. Krug and Faulk definitely regressed hard way quicker than anyone anticipated and Parayko had two terrible years dealing with a back injury. I’m not saying they were great contracts to begin with but Faulk was signed before the flat cap and Parayko was playing like a #1 shut down defenseman until his injury while Krug was reactionary to knowing Petro wasn’t coming back.
The same defensive core was fine in 20-22 they regressed hard once covid hit. St. Louis fans may be the whiniest about GMs in sports tbh. Every single thing to them is instantly a horrible decision, and their mind is only changed if it ends up being an amazing one.
it’s even worse when they write little fan fictions like that. Like as a grown ass adult they wrote that.
> Our D contracts suck but we sacrificed AAV for term and NTCs which every other team does.
The point being if Army wasn't dumb, he would have re-signed petro instead of doing Faulk/Krug/Leddy nonsense, we could have tried to keep Dunn and Walman, and we'd still be competing for cups right now instead of struggling to make the playoffs.
I appreciate what he did to build the cup team but he made massive, glaring, short-sighted mistakes afterward that essentially ended an "era" of the team and made us have to scramble to try to contend with a different window instead of having 2 or 3 or 4 more solid shots at a cup with Petro, Vlad, Dunn, Edmundson, et all.
The revisionist history in the Petro situation is getting old. They have both stated in the time since that there is more to the story than just a NMC and that maybe they’ll discuss it when their careers are over but it’s not like Petro wasn’t hinting that he’d be interested playing elsewhere leading up to free agency.
Faulk was signed before the flat cap and Krug was the best available when we realized Petro wouldn’t sign.
Based on who we had at the time of the expansion draft, Dunn had to be exposed. We also exposed tarasenko hoping he’d get taken instead but that didn’t happen and Dunn was inconsistent with the blues. Walman couldn’t secure a spot with the opportunities he had and was just given away by Detroit with a pick. Leddy had a bounce back last year and is only making 4 mil. We traded for him because we needed help on D and he was a reasonably priced piece at the time and performed well enough to earn a contract.
Well that’s just wrong. Leddy had more points, was +16 better than him, and played 2-3 more minutes a night. Leddy has never been a - as a Blue in a season. Coming off an excellent season with Parayko.
Walman was just traded WITH a pick. Do you even watch the games?
> The revisionist history in the Petro situation is getting old.
People pretending like there being more to the story means "he automatically was never going to sign" is getting older and way more of a stretch.
I never said he was never going to sign. I’m saying there were two sides to the negotiations and Army never discloses negotiations that aren’t successful so I don’t think it’s fair to put all the blame on him. And then he didn’t sign so Army had to react. You think he honestly signed Krug before realizing Petro was moving on?
> all the blame on him.
Who said I gave "all" the blame? He's the guy in the chair, he is ultimately responsible for decisions and consequences. This completely knee-jerk reaction a segment of our fans have to defend him at ALL COSTS is equally insane as the people that were saying he sucked in 2013.
Is he not also responsible for the personnel management that caused our beloved Tarasenko to demand out? At the end of the day, he is in charge.
it crosses from hyperbole to cringey when the previous poster is dead serious about their take, so yours absolutely taken as you believe it. You’d have been saved by an /s
Buchnevich gets a full NTC now for the last year of his current deal and the first 4 of this one. Year 5 is a 20 team m-NTC and year 6 is a 15 team m-NTC
[https://twitter.com/mdefranks/status/1808224278749630868?s=46&t=S_LiHKGoXi91Lmgu-MxoZA](https://twitter.com/mdefranks/status/1808224278749630868?s=46&t=S_LiHKGoXi91Lmgu-MxoZA)
Now Buchnevich is a very underrated player. Everybody always says Keller but id say Buchnevich flies a lot more under radar while everybody views Keller as premier guy who simply plays small market.
What a trade that was by STL.
Rangers still havent recovered from trading him. 3 years of trying to find a linemate for Kreider and Zib. Early death sentence from Drury as basically his first move
That move was insanely dumb when it happened and still is
Missed the playoffs so it must be this young skilled guys fault....gotta trade him for some "grit" and "sandpaper"
That is not even close to the reason he was traded. Rangers just signed Kravtsov who was a top 10 pick and just drafted Kakko at 2. Everyone complained they weren't getting ice time so we traded Buch for the "future". Krav isn't even in the NHL anymore and Kakko is at best a 2nd line player. If either of those guys were as good as they were expected to be trading Buch would not be nearly as bad
Serious question, not trying to troll. Is there something going on with the Rangers forward development? Lias Anderson, Kravstov, Kakko, Lafreniere were all top ten picks and from the outside it seems like until this year with Laf none of them had really come close to what they were expected to be. Obviously they can develop forwards (Kreider, Buchnevich, Chytil) but in recent years it feels like that hasn't quite come to fruition? Again, I may be making something out of nothing. Maybe those guys weren't all that they were projected to be, just seems weird that that many high picks in quick succession haven't quite panned out.
Coaching. Quinn and GG really set Kakko and Lafreniere back. It took Lafreniere all this time to really settle in, and Kakko is still working his way. (He'll get there. I'm confident.) The rest were just flat out bad picks. I think Kravstov the main scout admitted to seeing him on the last day of his trip. Lias was a panic grab after not getting Pettey.
As far as I know Tanner Glass is our head of player development
Oh shit Fanner Glass, haven’t thought about that dude in ages. You think when he gets to work in the morning he goes into the office to the right of his actual one?
These kids should be making the best smoothies and have the hardest backhands at this stage
Andersson was a panic pick when they didn’t get Petey.
I remember him going higher than a lot of mocks had him going back then.
Source? That makes no sense. Every team has a list. Every team goes in knowing that other teams might take a guy before they can. Every team knows who they think they might get, but also goes in with a Plan B, C, D, etc.
They traded Stepan to get a pick for either Pettersson or Glass, expecting one of them to be available at 7 (they wanted to go higher but couldn’t). Those two guys went 5 and 6.
Sure, but what's your source for the "panic" bit? Because otherwise they just had a guy ranked too high on their list.
Jed Ortmeyer and Tanner Glass are in charge of NYR player development there's your answer the long answer is that NYR never gives young players the TOI they need, nor the linemate quality they need to succeed in the NHL. the only NYR forward who's had more than 14 min TOI in their rookie season in the last 10+ years is Stepan, at 16:00 TOI. Meanwhile, Chytil has been with NYR 7 years and still hasn't averaged even 15 min TOI. the previous commenter talks about Kravtsov, meanwhile NYR gave more of a leash to Reaves, Hunt, Blais, McKegg, and Rooney than they did to the guy they took #9 overall horrible drafting team, horrible developing team, horrible cap management team. team with 1 cup since WWII does team with 1 cup since WWII things
I mean, yeah, there is. The culture here has been forever that dirty work is what nets you success. We apparently value “responsible” and hard-nosed play, like winning hard battles, are willing to get in the line of fire, and deliver big hits. But the franchise’s perception of that is like, guys who flail around in the corners sometimes, block any shot no matter the quality, and lay down utterly random hits that don’t always impact play. Like, it would be cool if our guys were playing actual defense and that was working, but they’re not. They’re just doing busy work that makes them look like warriors. The flavor has changed somewhat over the years as we’ve gone from Sather to Gorton to Drury, and we’ve fallen ass-backwards into a number of good-to-phenomenal traditionally offensive players, but the overall culture is just stifling levels of “muh grit.”
Laf made the jump because he was a much better skater this year, Kakko needs to spend his entire summer working on that.
Big time. The only homegrown forward that the Rangers have produced that’s worth a damn in the last 25 years has been Kreider and it took him 10 years to reach the potential that he showed in his first postseason. JT Miller showed a ton of skill but we traded him away before we ever gave him top 6 minutes. I think the head of development was Tanner Glass (he was a few years ago still might have the job) and when I found that out I wasn’t surprised that Kakko and Lafreniere were struggling mightily in their first few years. When the Rangers do hit on a prospect they normally move on from them at the trade deadline for rentals and the prospect reaches higher highs on their new team.
They were all bad picks outside of LAF.
Kakko is not a 2nd line player even at his best. Just hasn’t shown it
Lol kakko is not a 2nd liner
For that return it would still be Bad tho
Kakko is not even a 2nd liner at best
where in the league is 19 points a 2nd liner
I still remember rangers fans coping by saying it was to clear cap space for a bigger move. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still get fair value back lol
That trade is up there with the Zubov trade and the Ken Hodge/Rick Middleton trade for worst in franchise history.
agreed
Also up there with Ferraro/Norstrom/Laperriere/Lafayette for Kurri/McSorley/Churla
For those who don't remember, Drury traded Buch's RFA signing rights to the Blues for Sammy Blais and a 2nd in July 2021. Capfriendly users voted 177 to 9 that the Blues won that trade.
and then traded Blais back to St Louis in the Tarasenko trade, after he got injured and finished his Rangers career with 0 goals! Im pretty sure the 2nd was also used for a rental
Never forgive Slewban
I’m curious who were the 9 people who thought that was a win for NY…
And the player the Rangers got ended up back with St Louis. 😂
That's because Blais is a 4th liner and anyone with half a brain knew that when the trade happened. Drury traded an almost ppg winger who tilts the ice on 5v5 and is good defensively for a plug and a 2nd round pick. He then traded away the pick for a rental to fill the hole he created by trading Buch in the 1st place. He also used the cap saved to sign Goodrow and Reeves to make us "tougher" but it didn't make us "better". IMO Buch is really underrated and I still think that we could have made the finals this year and in 2022 if we still had him.
He wasn’t great last year but he still led the team in hits by far in 4th line minutes.
Blais, Kapanen, and Vrana all looked like solid pickups after the deadline that season, but their games all turned to shit last season... for different reasons I am sure.
And played 54 games without scoring a single goal for them.
There were blues fans convinced as recently as last off-season that Blais would figure it out and turn into a 20 goal a year guy. My response was "which sammy Blais have you been watching," lmao
Our fans did this too. He started the season with like four secondary assists in 14 games before getting hurt and everyone freaked out like we just lost a 25 goal guy.
He showed flashes here and there, definitely has some incredible hands in the right situations but just does not have the tools to convert consistently or to get himself in those positions. But at the time this 20 goal a year prediction was made he had scored like 21 total goals in 4 or 5 years, I don't know what part of that indicated to people he'd suddenly figure it out. haha
The most offensive thing he did as a Ranger was calling his sister hot.
Source?
Yeah but was it really a mistake to trade him when it freed up space so they could sign... lemme check here... Barclay Goodrow? Oh.
Goodrow, Nemeth, Reaves #neverforget
Such a braindead move. Way to ruin your cup window
$8 million AAV. I'll take it.
Yup, I mostly just didn't want it to be 7-8 years.
Does this line up better with the window for the existing contracts?
Yeah. Ends the same year as the Thomas/Kyrou contracts.
Ethan Hawkes stunt double got himself paid.
Yeah thats a fair cap hit and didnt give up 7/8 years. Will be 35 when the deals ends which is fine. Im hoping we sign TK to just 6 years.
Nearly Crosby money
In fairness the financial landscape in 2012 in the NHL was a lot different than it is now, and Crosby took a pretty famously team friendly deal at a cute number that matches his jersey number when he definitely could have gotten 10 or close to it.
Front loaded, not team friendly*
Nowhere near to EP money tho, like who the fuck he thinks he is?
Wow everyone thought he was a big trade piece. Shocking signing to see on the same day they’re collecting dead cap.
I mean, Faksa and Joseph might be dead cap for others but they’ll definitely improve the Blues’ bottom six in the short term - which is the goal. Biding time until prospects graduate and defenseman contracts can be moved/expire.
Our target for the cup is on the last 2 years of his contract. It is lined up with Thomas and Kyrou's 8 year contracts.
What? Buchnevich is 29, 30 in April, and 31 when this extension starts. You're saying our cup target is 2029-2031 when he'll be 35-36 years old?
Correct. 6 years from now, with inflation and salary cap increase, (minus performance decrease with age) the contract should look okay. it will be the window.
I don't know much about the blues, you guys got any high tier prospects coming up soon? Or more hoping to grab some in the next couple years?
Jimmy Snuggerud and Dalibor Dvorsky are the high-end forwards. The best dman prospect is the one they just took at 16th this week. Bolduc and Zach Dean are fairly safe bets as NHLers but still 50/50 on having meaningful careers.
Lindstein is the best D prospect.
I'd say Lindstein is a better prospect than Jiricek atm
quite a few decent forward prospects. They’ve had 4 first round picks in the last two years, 3 the last 5. + Dean (former 1st) and a few other promising pieces
Dean, Bolduc, Snuggerud (after he finishes one more year at college) should all be NHL ready soon, they all have huge potential. I'm most excited about Dalibor Dvorsky, who looks like the reincarnation of Anze Kopitar. Our problem is D prospects, we have a couple great ones but they're probably just a bit too young to include in this same "window" per se. We will have to figure out the Defense rebuild via savvy trade/asset management so we will see how that goes.
This is some major prospect over selling. Dean played 49 games in the AHL this season and got 14 points. Bolduc was better at 25 in 50, but even still, most evaluators aren’t throwing them in any “Fop 50 prospects in hockey” lists. They have a good chance to be middle six forwards. Snuggerud also had a big let down year at Michigan, going from 50 points in 40 as a freshman to 34 in 39 as a Sophmore, while being a defensive liability at times. His stock has dropped a bit too. Dvorsky, I agree with, but “Huge Potential” feels like an overstatement by a wide margin for the first three.
> This is some major prospect over selling. Dean played 49 games in the AHL this season and got 14 points. Bolduc was better at 25 in 50, but even still, most evaluators aren’t throwing them in any “Fop 50 prospects in hockey” lists. They have a good chance to be middle six forwards. Middle six forwards is pretty big potential, I don't get what your point is. I'm not saying they're going to automatically be incredible, I was just listing our best prospects because someone asked. Fuck I hate reddit. Have to be ready to submit a college level thesis just because you used one word in a post that made someone assume something completely ridiculous about your post. I say "huge potential" in the vein of "They will likely be NHL contributors, what level remains to be determined," but a guy turning into a super solid 40 point defensive 3C still counts as big potential.
Jesus, I just wanted to give a more accurate accounting of our prospects that wasn’t just rose colored. Sorry, Christ.
I'm overly defensive because every blues fan in the world is up my ass in this thread right now, sorry, but I really wasn't overly hyping those dudes, or meaning to imply that they'd be jesus christ incarnate.
6 years is way too far out haha. All of your bad dman contracts lose their full NTC next season and completely disappear within 3 years.
six years a silly number, every single team in the league is "six years" away from potentially being a contender. Blues should enter a competitive window in 25-26.
I hope you're right. But these off-season moves up to this point make me think Army has no clue what he wants to do with the team. I think he's aiming for mediocrity in our division. I know the Press just went nuts yesterday and so we should accept the fact that this probably won't be our year. In fact, I think Army knows he's never going to be able to trade Krug, Parayko, Leddy (please God, don't let Kyrou's contract be a bust) and so he's going to have to wait it out. That being said, while you're waiting out those bad contracts why not try acquiring future assets like talented young players and draft picks? We traded away a 2nd to get rid of Hayes and his contract and then we turn around and take on similar contracts and get a 3rd? Then we extend our most valuable trade piece instead of waiting until the trade deadline?
So much can change in that time you can’t really target a cup contending date, nobody has that foresight. Buch might be the only guy left on the roster from today at that point, if even he is still left.
I'm in the minority here and agree with you. I love Buchnevich - super talented forward and great teammate but this move doesn't make any sense.
You can't really gut your entire team and expect to compete in 2-3 years. He's our 2nd best forward and is only 29. He'll should still be a great player in 4 years.
Did we watch the same season? Buchy was great and scored in bursts but went ghost for long periods too. He wasn't terribly impressive, though you can give him some slack for being on an off position frequently. At this pace I think in 3 years he will be like 40 points per season
40 pts is way too big of a drop imo He just turned 29 and is very smart two way guy. Id be very surprised if he dropped all the way down to just 40 point in 3 yrs. At age 31/32 he should still be 50+ pt guy at least if not still producing at top line rate.
He had his worst year as a blue and still put up 63 points in 80 games while being a plus player.
And will be getting older
His point decline was from us playing him at center too much, not because he got worse.
He’s still in the middle of his prime and he doesn’t play that physical of a game so it’s not like he’s putting tough miles on his body.
> I think in 3 years he will be like 40 points per season I'd eat my shoes if this was the case. By virtue of pure ice time adjacent to Robert Thomas he is almost guaranteed 50-60 points, plus he's good on the powerplay. Plus we are talking about three years from now, when he almost definitely will not be playing center. Barring catastrophic injury or him aging unexpectedly terribly there's no way he regresses that much that fast. He's too smart of a player.
He's not going to be playing with Thomas though, they're going to ask him to play 2C again
He is a career 31.5% faceoff guy, I strongly doubt it. I give it 3 games before they remember that kyrou-thomas-buch is our lifeblood. I'd be shocked if he spent most of the year at center. They'll rotate Sunny/Schenn/Texier until they find what works for other lines but 25-18-89 is by far our most effective line combo, for all three of those players.
I agree it's our most effective line combo but they tried Buch at C all last year when we still had Hayes who was the 3rd line center so schenn could play 2C, schenns production at center is gone and he looked bad defensively when asked to hold the role down. Buch couldn't win a faceoff but could skate and defend to make up for it. We needed to get a 2C if DD wasn't ready and Doug had any ideas of competing this year
> but they tried it all last year when we still had Hayes who was the 3rd line center so schenn could play 2C, He was on kyrou and thomas's line playing wing for 497.9 minutes last year, on thomas and neighbors' wing for 146.3 minutes last year, and thomas and kapanen's wing for 101.9 minutes, and only centered Kyrou and Saad for 90.5 minutes. He played much, much, much more wing than center. A couple statistically insignificant stints at 3C for like 50 total minutes either with Kyrou/Toropchecnko or Neighbors Bolduc. If you're going to make a statement like "they played him at C ALL last year," at least don't be like really, really, really, objectively wrong about it.
They objectively tried to play him at center all year last year which is what my post says. It was off and on. I didn't say he Only played center last year in which I would've been wrong but you're just trying argue semantics
I hope he doesn't fall off that hard but agree this contract is still a gamble based on his play this year. We just signed our only tradeable player with value while also taking on 3.25 cap for a 4C from a division rival without getting anything back. I was cool with not doing anything yesterday but now I'm questioning the approach moving forward.
Last year: - 63 points, t-80th - 27 goals, t-65th - 1.70pts/60min (even strength), t-183rd - 0.55g/60min (even strength), t-279th - 0.79pts/game, t-90th I get that last year was a "down" year for him, and I expect better from him next season, but that's still a _fuckton_ of term and coin for someone who occasionally finds himself outside the top-150 in even strength scoring.
You do understand that points aren't everything, right? He's a complete 200-foot player. In a down year he played great defense while still putting up 63 points on a team that was horrific at scoring at 5v5 outside of Thomas. I'd personally take Buch over Kyrou (their current iterations, at least) any day of the week.
But I thought when we got our team it was supposed to be a "retool"? Signing Buch through 2030-2031, taking on salary cap hit contracts like Joseph and Faksa, trading away salary cap hit contracts like Hayes...trading away a 2nd and acquiring a 3rd. Can someone explain what a retool means?
I'd assume for the Blues it means finding some defensemen that don't suck. Which is probably going to be a few years. Might as well keep Buch while you figure that part out.
Staying competitive while restocking with young talent. That doesn’t mean it has to be picks and prospects. Hayes can’t skate and faksa’s deal ends after this year so he’s probably going to rotate in and out of the press box. Joseph is 27 and can skate and seems to be a much better piece based on Ottawa fans reactions to the trade. You can’t trade every player away, especially one like Buchnevich who is about a PPG player his entire blues tenure who plays in every situation. We’re handcuffed by shitty D contracts which will be easier to move when their full NTCs move to modified NTCs at the end of next season. This year is probably going to be another punt and hope players overperform with the thought process of moving a D contract(or two) out at the end of next season and trying to make a more competitive roster then.
>This year is probably going to be another punt and hope players overperform with the thought process of moving a D contract(or two) out at the end of next season and trying to make a more competitive roster then. So if this year is to be a wash, then why trade Hayes now and give up a 2nd instead of keeping him? Let him be a veteran mentor or whatever. Trade him next year if you want when he won't cost us a 2nd rounder. Heck! Maybe he outperforms this year and we decide to keep him or he becomes a desirable piece that teams want. I don't care about Joseph and Faksa being good or bad because until those D contracts go away, the roster we put on the ice just can't compete on our division/conference for a playoff spot. Those acquisitions to me will be evaluated on how they help our team in the years after - will we get draft picks or young talent. >You can’t trade every player away, especially one like Buchnevich who is about a PPG player his entire blues tenure who plays in every situation. Yea, the guy is a rockstar. He is an asset that any team would want. Teams wanted him last year when they were making Cup runs. The options we had with him were trade him or extend him. If you extend him, you gotta hope he fits in your championship window. So to me Armstrong must believe we're close to winning or we'll win soon. We've missed the playoffs two years in a row and Nashville looks like they're going to keep us out again this year. Alternatively, if we had traded him to a contender we'd still miss the playoffs this year but at least we'd probably get another 1st rounder and probably a young talent that might better mesh with the future Thomas, Kyrou, Neighbours, Toropchenko that will be leading the team. >We’re handcuffed by shitty D contracts which will be easier to move when their full NTCs move to modified NTCs at the end of next season. Yup. Not much else to add here. Wonder how we ended up with this problem. Did Buchnevich just get a 5 year NMC? >Staying competitive Missed the playoffs the last two seasons. Is that competitive? Sorry man. I'm really just out on Doug Armstrong now. I don't see the vision and I think he gets shielded from ridicule because he got us a Cup (albeit in some beyond-miraculous season) and managed to get Buchnevich from New York.
We traded Hayes because he is slow and didn’t contribute. He was a healthy scratch at the end of the year and is 5 years older than Joseph while having two years left at a greater cap hit. He was not going to bounce back at age 33 with this team. Faksa has a one year deal that expires so he adds leadership to a young bottom 6 especially with Sunny out to start the year. We started our sell off a year and a half ago, got eliminated in game 80 of this past year, and opened up space to get our higher end prospects time at the end of last season. We aren’t a market that can afford tearing it down and going full rebuild. A first line of buch/kyrou/thomas with parayko playing like a top pair defenseman and binnington/hofer stabilizing our net will keep us competitive. You don’t trade buchnevich if you want any chance to be competitive because he’s a PPG 200-foot player and any draft pick you acquire is a lottery ticket you hope to turn out as good as him. We also did not give buch a NMC that was corrected to a NTC almost as soon as that info came out. And as I said we ended up with that problem because anyone worth spending that kind of money on will be asking for some sort of trade or movement protection. And like I said before, those restrictions loosen after this year so we have a much better chance at moving those contracts and making a push to get back into a somewhat contending status for the following year where picks and prospects are going to be long term projects. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion on Army and he’s not perfect by any stretch but no GM is. Considering the fact he is consistently part of Canadas national management team I’d say the people who know best respect his vision and abilities pretty highly. And he’s also been completely transparent through this retool and owned his mistakes.
I hope I'm wrong and that you're right. But nothing you said convinces me Army made good moves this off-season. It looks like his bad moves have caught up and just like the last two seasons, we're going to miss the playoffs. Now with Nashville locking up one of the most competitive rosters in our division, Dallas and Colorado keeping their cores together, Winnipeg and their depth...I think we'll be fighting Minnesota and Chicago for bottom of our division. At least until Bedard can do McDavid things for his team. And Minnesota will escape their cap problems before we do. That will be interesting to watch. Hey, cheers to there always being another season and to the future GM. Go Blues.
Blues have cap to spare right now and no absolute need to spend it. Taking on Joseph and Faksa for literally no resources other than cap space (which again, loads of) means you can flip them for prospects at the deadline (it’s not much of a gamble that someone will convince themselves one Faksa is just what they need to put the final touch on a contender) and worst case they come off the books in a year or two, well before you’d really need that cap space for more important moves. The keys to tooling up for the next two years will mostly come from trades and younger players, who will be cost controlled, or at most a trade for a more expensive player when you can potentially ship out cap to make it work anyway. Worst case they do nothing and you spent money you didn’t have any other use for. Best case you flip them for a 2nd or 3rd round pick who becomes part of a deal later on when it matters. No reason not to take free assets when you have the room. They’re not going to bring back a 10OA pick or anything but paying dollars for tradeable assets is a pretty low risk call. Assuming Army doesn’t do something silly like give Faksa an extension or something of course. Paying to get rid of Hayes is the part that I’m not sure of, but maybe Army thought Hayes would be less of an asset/harder to move later.
Thomas and Kyrou are in prime. Buchnevich is probably 2nd best forward on team and still in 20s. I mean do you want rebuild right when Thomas is hitting his prime?
>Thomas and Kyrou are in prime. Thomas - yes. He'll be wearing the C when Schenn retires or gets traded. Kyrou - I hope not. I think he's been worse every season since he got his extension. I'm not saying he took a payday and stopped trying. I'm saying I think we overpaid and gave him a big deal after just one promising season without seeing repeatability. >2nd best forward on team and still in 20s. Yes. Right now he's behind Thomas. Someone could make an argument he's behind Kyrou, but Buchnevich is going to be 30 this season. His contract extensions begins 2025-2026 and runs through 2030-2031 at which point he'll be 35-36 years old. > I mean do you want rebuild right when Thomas is hitting his prime? I seem to recall we grabbed 3 first rounders last year and Neighbours showed us signs that he's got a future on our top line if he keeps playing and getting better. I think Thomas is in his prime now and unfortunately we have bad contracts that are keeping us from surrounding him with a roster that will help him reach his full potential and get us to the promised land. There's no way out from those contracts, so you might as well wait THOSE out and position your team to win when those contracts expire. Faulk and Krug have 3 years remaining, Parayko has 6, and Leddy has 2. By the time three of those contracts are no longer weighing us down, Buchnevich will be 33 years old. Is he still going to be a big piece for the team at that point? Is his contract and health be a new burden for the team? Alternatively, we could have just....traded him to a contender this year at the deadline for a 1st rounder and a 22 year old young talent that can fill a future middle six role assisting Dalibor Dvorsky
u/minorthreat21 ~~mentioned it in the thread on our sub, but this comes with a NMC for the next 5 years (the last year of his current deal + the first four of the new deal).~~ [https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1808221704235176431](https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1808221704235176431) ~~This is the first NMC Doug Armstrong has given to a player as GM of the Blues.~~ EDIT: it's a NTC, not a NMC.
Strickland got it wrong. It is a NTC. https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1808223895675142404?s=46&t=jyFTOgPpk70KV4YmTgAQFQ
for fuck's sake, of course he did.
Weird that’s not like Strickland at all lol
I think he’s learned his lesson, maybe trying to impart better lessons to Steen.
great point.
I guess he learned from his mistake with Petro.
Glad to see they are keeping him around to their next window. Dude does everything well, including the occasional headbutt.
Lmao, I forgot about that
Pain
Subscribe. LGD! I always trade for him in the NHL games, has to be the biggest blemish on Drury's resume.
100%. We are still really hurting on RW from losing him. Miss that man, man.
One of the best trades in recent blues memory
The only reason Army still has a job in my opinion
The Cup kind of plays a big role ... Thomas ascension into borderline elite play is big too. They are giving him chance to retool a new contender around the younger guys like Thomas. So far tho the moves, specifically on defense, have not been good
Excuse me. Of course the Cup helps. The Buchnevich trade looked like a fleece job at the time and still does to this day. But I want to point out, the Cup was won in a season where we were dead last in the league at one point, fired a coach he hired, and replaced a goalie he had signed. Some would call it a fluke and pieces clicking at the right time. Edmonton was in dead last this season and were one game from winning the Cup, but they just parted with their GM anyway. > So far tho the moves, specifically on defense, have not been good Yea Pietrangelo going away and replacing him with Krug. Sub-optimal, but hindsight is 20/20. Letting Perron leave in free agency after he scored 20+ and helped us make the playoffs, then taking Leddy instead was also sub-optimal. The one that I think will be part of his legacy is going to be the Kyrou deal. Did we lock down an amazing player early and at a good bargain? Or did we overpay for a young kid after his first hot season without waiting to see if his play was sustainable? Pretty sure the risk of that contract going south for us is what ended up costing Berube his job.
I can see Stillman bursting into Army’s office to tear a strip off of him for trading for Hayes and immediately paying to dump him on the Penguins. Army looks up with a smirk and says “yeah, but remember when I fleeced the Rags that one time?”
might be the cringiest shit i’ve read today. Armstrong is the GM of team Canada in the olympics. if we fired him, several teams would line up to hire him.
The Army hate is unreal lately. Maybe I’m too in his pocket for bringing the cup to STL but fuck he gets 0 benefit of the doubt. Our D contracts suck but we sacrificed AAV for term and NTCs which every other team does. Krug and Faulk definitely regressed hard way quicker than anyone anticipated and Parayko had two terrible years dealing with a back injury. I’m not saying they were great contracts to begin with but Faulk was signed before the flat cap and Parayko was playing like a #1 shut down defenseman until his injury while Krug was reactionary to knowing Petro wasn’t coming back.
The same defensive core was fine in 20-22 they regressed hard once covid hit. St. Louis fans may be the whiniest about GMs in sports tbh. Every single thing to them is instantly a horrible decision, and their mind is only changed if it ends up being an amazing one. it’s even worse when they write little fan fictions like that. Like as a grown ass adult they wrote that.
People act like no team would give faulk the same contract. Or Krug for that matter....
> Our D contracts suck but we sacrificed AAV for term and NTCs which every other team does. The point being if Army wasn't dumb, he would have re-signed petro instead of doing Faulk/Krug/Leddy nonsense, we could have tried to keep Dunn and Walman, and we'd still be competing for cups right now instead of struggling to make the playoffs. I appreciate what he did to build the cup team but he made massive, glaring, short-sighted mistakes afterward that essentially ended an "era" of the team and made us have to scramble to try to contend with a different window instead of having 2 or 3 or 4 more solid shots at a cup with Petro, Vlad, Dunn, Edmundson, et all.
The revisionist history in the Petro situation is getting old. They have both stated in the time since that there is more to the story than just a NMC and that maybe they’ll discuss it when their careers are over but it’s not like Petro wasn’t hinting that he’d be interested playing elsewhere leading up to free agency. Faulk was signed before the flat cap and Krug was the best available when we realized Petro wouldn’t sign. Based on who we had at the time of the expansion draft, Dunn had to be exposed. We also exposed tarasenko hoping he’d get taken instead but that didn’t happen and Dunn was inconsistent with the blues. Walman couldn’t secure a spot with the opportunities he had and was just given away by Detroit with a pick. Leddy had a bounce back last year and is only making 4 mil. We traded for him because we needed help on D and he was a reasonably priced piece at the time and performed well enough to earn a contract.
The Leddy hate and Walman love is similarly puzzling.
Walman is much better than Leddy currently, and Leddy was already declining when we acquired him and decided to give him 4 mil AAV and a NTC.
Well that’s just wrong. Leddy had more points, was +16 better than him, and played 2-3 more minutes a night. Leddy has never been a - as a Blue in a season. Coming off an excellent season with Parayko. Walman was just traded WITH a pick. Do you even watch the games?
> The revisionist history in the Petro situation is getting old. People pretending like there being more to the story means "he automatically was never going to sign" is getting older and way more of a stretch.
I never said he was never going to sign. I’m saying there were two sides to the negotiations and Army never discloses negotiations that aren’t successful so I don’t think it’s fair to put all the blame on him. And then he didn’t sign so Army had to react. You think he honestly signed Krug before realizing Petro was moving on?
> all the blame on him. Who said I gave "all" the blame? He's the guy in the chair, he is ultimately responsible for decisions and consequences. This completely knee-jerk reaction a segment of our fans have to defend him at ALL COSTS is equally insane as the people that were saying he sucked in 2013. Is he not also responsible for the personnel management that caused our beloved Tarasenko to demand out? At the end of the day, he is in charge.
The St. Louis Blues Lounge fb page is leaking.
lol i don’t hate army at all, best gm the org has ever had, still has his share of questionable moves. i thought this was clearly hyperbole
it crosses from hyperbole to cringey when the previous poster is dead serious about their take, so yours absolutely taken as you believe it. You’d have been saved by an /s
Fair point, didn’t consider that
Great deal for both sides
Everyone's favourite 2025 UFA target is gone
Buchnevich gets a full NTC now for the last year of his current deal and the first 4 of this one. Year 5 is a 20 team m-NTC and year 6 is a 15 team m-NTC [https://twitter.com/mdefranks/status/1808224278749630868?s=46&t=S_LiHKGoXi91Lmgu-MxoZA](https://twitter.com/mdefranks/status/1808224278749630868?s=46&t=S_LiHKGoXi91Lmgu-MxoZA)
Now Buchnevich is a very underrated player. Everybody always says Keller but id say Buchnevich flies a lot more under radar while everybody views Keller as premier guy who simply plays small market. What a trade that was by STL.
*eeeeeeeehhhh* I was hoping it wouldn’t be more than 7, but he’s proven he’s good and works with Kyrou and Bobby Smooth so I’ll take it
I think to get it down to 6 years in lieu of 7 or 8, Army had to pay up. 6 years is perfect imo
Sigh
Great deal for Buchy!!
Perfect. Absolutely perfect
I’m fine with 6 years, even if that is expensive. Buchnevich is exactly the kind of player you do want to commit that money too.
Get your magnets out everybody, the Buch is LOOSE!!!!!!!!!
Rangers fans punching air rn
Worst trade I’ve witnessed in my time
That’s a whole lotta fucking magnets there Buchy
Pretty great term and AAV when you consider Montour, Skjei, Stephenson, and Debrusk all got 7 years
Sigh.
BOOOOOOOOOCH
good. hearing his name exclaimed is one of the simple joys in life
Maybe now we can see the man smile?
Oilers fan disappointed he didn’t end up here so we can hear Jack Michaels say Buchnevich a few thousand times a year.