2023-24 NHL team preview: St. Louis Blues

LAST SEASON

The St. Louis Blues went into the 2022-23 season well aware that their championship window was closing as team legends Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko waded into contract years, but few would have predicted the team’s decaying 2019 Stanley Cup core would fully melt down. It did just that, and the Blues missed the postseason for only the second time since the 2011-12 season after trading "ROR" and Tarasenko at the deadline.

GM Doug Armstrong insulated himself from the fallout of the team’s first sub-.500 finish of his tenure by extending Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas before the season and recouping firsts for both Tarasenko and O’Reilly, who could have walked for nothing in the offseason. Armstrong was smart to wave the white flag at the midway point of the season, but he still has to escape a maze of his design to get St. Louis back on track ahead of the 2023-2024 campaign.

The GM has played fast and loose with hefty contracts, which has landed the Blues in big trouble on the back end. The top four defensemen for a team that surrendered 298 goals last season, one fewer than a Chicago Blackhawks team trying to lose games, are back on high salaries and with the term. So is goaltender Jordan Binnington, who just limped through the worst campaign of his career. Like their old rivals in Detroit and Chicago, the St. Louis Blues may soon discover the cost of holding on for too long.

If coach Craig Berube cannot rehabilitate everyone from Binnington to Colton Parayko, he and Armstrong will feel their seats heating up in that order; Stanley Cup rings can only delay accountability for so long.

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions

Kevin Hayes, C
MacKenzie MacEachern, LW
Malcolm Subban, G
Oskar Sundqvist, C

Departures 

Tyler Pitlick, C (NYR)
Matthew Highmore, C (Ott)
Logan Brown, C (TB)
Steven Santini, D (LA)
Dmitri Samorukov, D (AHL)
Thomas Greiss, G (retired)
Josh Leivo, LW (KHL)

OFFENSE

Kyrou and Thomas are young enough to carry the torch for the Blues in the post-Tarasenko era, but are they good enough? That question will determine St. Louis’s scoring output next season. The duo needs to find a second gear to elevate a group composed of middle-six veterans who aren’t getting any better at this stage in their careers.

The ability is there. Kyrou just buried 37 goals, many of them off the stick of linemate Thomas, who has 104 helpers over the last two seasons. Last year, however, there were growing pains, and losing David Perron in the offseason and O’Reilly, Tarasenko, and Ivan Barbashev at the trade deadline did not help. Despite their obvious scoring chemistry with left wing Pavel Buchnevich, Thomas and Kyrou failed to drive play at even strength; neither controlled more than an abysmal 42% of 5-on-5 high-danger chances while on the ice, and Kyrou’s -38 rating tied Chicago’s Seth Jones for the second-worst mark in the league.

No one shined for St. Louis on the metric side last season; their shambolic defense cast a long statistical shadow. What’s more troubling is that Thomas and Kyrou were still negatives in expected goals on the 2021-22 Blues, who collected 109 points and won a playoff series. At least the former kills penalties; when Kyrou isn’t scoring, he isn’t doing much of anything, and for $8.25 million AAV, that’s not good enough.

Though its de facto stars will determine the upper limit of the Blues’ offense, the team has a stable floor thanks to a host of capable veterans. Buchnevich is the best of the bunch and has quietly buried 56 goals since arriving in St. Louis at a ruthless 17.4% shooting clip. The Russian’s injury history is a concern, but Buchnevich is 14th among NHL wingers in per-game scoring over the last two seasons; he arguably stabilizes the team’s top six more than Kyrou or Thomas.  

Brandon Saad and newly minted captain Brayden Schenn have slowly transformed from rising stars into grizzled veterans, but both still reliably produce 20 goals a season and can slot into any of the top three lines. Schenn was especially impressive last season, stepping up with the second 65-point season of his career and playing all 82 games to provide the volatile Blues with some badly needed reliability and earn himself the ‘C.’

Buchnevich, Schenn, and Saad’s dependability will be a huge plus this year due to the misfit toys that round out the top nine forwards. Kevin Hayes’s All-Star season in 2022-23 was only a success on the stat sheet (18G, 53P), and his year-long cold war with Philadelphia Flyers coach John Tortorella tanked his second-half scoring and the team’s morale. The best version of Hayes is a two-way special teamer and locker room leader, but the Bostonian checked out after it became clear his time in Philadelphia was over. The last thing the embattled Blues need is a disengaged maverick, and if Hayes can return to his fun-loving best, both parties will be better off.

Hayes is not the only unknown in St. Louis; reclamation projects Kasperi Kapenen and Jakub Vrana clicked with the team down the stretch after stints in Pittsburgh and Detroit, respectively, that destroyed the Finn’s confidence and the Czech’s health. They combined for 18 goals and 28 points in 43 games for the Blues, and if one or both can rediscover his best hockey, Armstrong will have added a 40-point scorer (more?) at virtually no cost to the team. They could just as easily backslide into underachievement, leaving St. Louis bare in the depth department.

DEFENSE

Does anyone still have Alex Pietrangelo on speed dial? Armstrong “won” a battle of wills with his captain in the summer of 2020, refusing to grant him a no-movement clause that the Vegas Golden Knights were all too happy to guarantee. Three seasons on, ‘Petro’ is once again the top defenseman on a Stanley Cup team as St. Louis scrambles for answers on the blueline; they were the league’s sixth-worst defense and third-worst penalty kill (72.4%) in 2022-23. With Pietrangelo still at his dominant best and expansion casualty Vince Dunn lighting it up in Seattle, the Blues’ wounds are full of salt.

Even if they have lost Pietrangelo and Dunn for nothing over the past few seasons, St. Louis should never have been this bad, considering the names (and contracts) on their blueline. Justin Faulk is just a year removed from the best season of his career when he finished sixth in the NHL in rating. Torey Krug joined as a free agent in 2020 to offset the loss of Pietrangelo and averages 42 assists per 82 games for his NHL career. Colton Parayko’s combination of size and speed is rare. So how were the Blues such parking cones on defense?

The short answer is that Armstrong has paid most of this group handsomely to be something they aren’t. Krug is still a fine player who is as dangerous as anyone at finding teammates on the power play, but his slight build has led to durability issues. The former Bruin has never managed a 65-game season as a Blue, and Berube has trusted him with less ice time in each of his three years with the team. Krug is not a top-pair guy at this stage in his career, and Armstrong was grasping at straws when he tabbed him as Pietrangelo’s replacement. Parayko has all the tools to be one of the best in the world, but a nagging back issue and a Jay Bouwmeester-sized hole on his left side have left him short on self-belief. Is he suddenly going to put it all together at 30? Nick Leddy, a 32-year-old making $4 million AAV through 2026 for slick skating and not much else, is another expensive problem.

On the bright side, Faulk just posted a career-best 50 points without the injury problems of Krug or the lack of confidence that plagues Parayko. Faulk was a mess in his own end last season, controlling just 42.96% of expected goals, but that number is such an outlier for Faulk that even a career-average season on defense would be a massive improvement. The 31-year-old has never been a shutdown defender, but he’s better than that. Parayko, Leddy, and Krug’s issues are consistent with trends; Faulk’s seem more like a blip on the radar.

Further down the lineup, Robert Bortuzzo is St. Louis’s most-tenured player but is most valuable in the locker room. 33-year-old lefty Marco Scandella is seeking to bounce back from missing all but 20 games last season, though his reward for productivity would only be a ticket out of St. Louis. Ditto for Calle Rosen, who overachieved as a 29-year-old journeyman in 2022-23. Armstrong can replace any pending UFA trade chips in-house; Tyler Tucker made 50 hits in 26 games as a rookie last season, and, though he cannot stay healthy, 25-year-old Scott Perunovich racks up points wherever he goes.

GOALTENDING

Something clicked for Jordan Binnington during the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs. He was able to wrest the St. Louis cage from Ville Husso, who had outperformed him during the regular season, to lead the Blues past the Minnesota Wild and keep them in their conference semi-final matchup with the high-powered Colorado Avalanche, posting a ridiculous .949 save percentage along the way. Before the netminder went down hurt and the Blues promptly came unraveled, the stellar performance eased concerns over the value of the 6-year, $36-million contract he signed the offseason before and gave Armstrong the confidence to let Husso walk in free agency. As the 2023-24 season approaches, fears about the 2019 playoff hero’s viability as a franchise goalie are back with interest.

Binnington had to start a career-high 60 games as backup Thomas Greiss struggled to find his form, and Binnington’s 3.31 GAA and .894 SV% were career worsts. It would have taken Glenn Hall to sort out the mess left by the Blues’ disjointed defense, but Binnington has done nothing outside of his six 2022 playoff starts to earn the benefit of the doubt. In 2021-2022, his numbers were subpar enough (3.01 GAA, .901 SV%) to allow Husso to take his job on the 11th most defensively stout team in the league, and the Owen Sound Attack alum has regressed incrementally in each of his years as a starter.

Then there’s Binngton’s attitude. Berube, one of the most feared enforcers in NHL history, had to tell the shot-stopper to tone down the tantrums; competitive fire has become an unwanted distraction.

With Husso in Detroit, it is rookie netminder Joel Hofer’s turn to breathe down Binnington’s neck. Hofer was lights-out for the AHL Springfield Thunderbirds, posting a .921 SV% while going 25-15-5 before debuting in the show and earning a spot on Canada’s IIHF World Championship roster. At 6-foot-5, the 23-year-old is a prototypical modern goaltender;  if he pushes Binnington for the No. 1 job, both players and the team will benefit from the competition.

COACHING

Winning the big one buys a coach plenty of rope, but Berube is down to his last centimeter in St. Louis. Armstrong has not exactly put him in a position to repeat his championship success by tying up so much money in middling or declining players, but almost 300 goals against and a 28-point dropoff is ugly beyond excuse. ‘Chief’ has always been a leader first and a coach second, and he’s not out of the fight yet. If the Blues can rally around Berube and a modified leadership group of Schenn, Parayko, and Faulk to make the playoffs, the bench boss will be as safe as ever. If they replicate last year’s ice-cold start and the likes of Binnington and Krug continue to slip, the only Stanley Cup-winning coach in the team’s history might be in the breadline by January.

The Blues already axed Craig MacTavish and Mike Van Ryn, whom Michael Babcock (not that one) and Mike Weber replaced, respectively. Weber will tackle the task of revamping St. Louis’s defense. Four no-trade clauses on the blueline mean he has to do that with the same group that faltered under Van Ryn.

ROOKIES

Hofer will be St. Louis’s most visible rookie thanks to a guaranteed place on the opening night roster, but plenty of other new NHLers are looking to make their mark at the Enterprise Center this season.

Perunovich will look to make his mark on a crowded blueline after recording 18 points in 22 AHL games last season. He is too good (and old) for the Blues to keep stashing him in the ‘A,’ but his history of shoulder injuries and waiver exemption hurt his chances. If he can make the club, they’d have a cheaper, younger Krug to work with on the power play. That will be easier said than done; even without Niko Mikkola, the Blues have eight D-men on one-way contracts, and Perunovich is not one of them.

Hofer and Perunovich are clearly in the mix for NHL game time in the cage and on the blueline, but the situation at forward is decidedly less clear for St. Louis’s forward prospects. 10th-overall selection Dalibor Dvorsky is rounding out his game in Sweden, QMJHL standouts Zach Bolduc and Zach Dean could use some AHL seasoning in Springfield, and Jimmy Snuggerud will return to the University of Minnesota for at least another year. All four should get power play time within a few seasons, but none is guaranteed to debut this season.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. What the heck’s a retool? The Boston Bruins get to retool. They have two of the NHL’s best players, David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy, on the books until at least 2029 and can afford to stop gambling with their future now that Patrice Bergeron is retired. The Minnesota Wild get to retool. It hasn’t happened for them in the playoffs, their cap situation is unwinnable until the Parise and Suter payouts decrease, and most of their best players are young anyway. Why should the Blues get to retool? What about this organization ensures that, after a year or two of adversity, they will be back and better than ever? Krug will not waive his no-trade clause to go to a bottom-feeder. Schenn, Binnington, and Faulk are under contract through the bitter end of their respective primes. As linchpins go, Jordan Kyrou is no David Pastrnak. Flipping Kapanen or Scandella for middle-round picks at the deadline won’t change how bleak things are in St. Louis.

2. Any Takers? Armstrong kicked off the retool rhetoric by bailing on the playoff picture and trading Tarasenko, O’Reilly, and Barbashev last February. This season, it won’t be that easy for the GM to hoard first-round picks (he had three in 2023) if things go south in time for the trade deadline. O’Reilly and Tarasenko were known playoff performers on expiring deals that have flirted with superstar status at various points in their careers; trading the two, along with the versatile Russian Barbashev, did not take much finesse. Outside of Vrana, Kapanen, and Rosen, the Blues do not have many easily movable assets ahead of this season; they would have to beg teams to eat a contract like Leddy or Binnington’s. Then, they’d have to beg the players involved to waive the no-trade clauses Armstrong is so fond of awarding. The Blues roster may be locked into place for a long time, and it is difficult to call that a positive.

3. Can Joel Hofer and Scott Perunovich move the needle in the NHL? The Blues can only escape their expensive purgatory by developing quality pro players in-house. Hofer and Perunovich are the rookies closest to making their mark on the team, and it just so happens their performance could inform how St. Louis handles two of its more unsavory contracts. Perunovich should fill in for an injured Krug if he does not return in time for the season, while Hofer is gunning to take Binnington’s job permanently. If both succeed, could Armstong aggressively shop the veterans ahead of them on the depth chart? Those pesky no-trade clauses could make that tricky, but the veteran executive could replace Binnington and Krug in the lineup for pennies on the dollar.

PREDICTION

The Blues are incredibly volatile as a critical season in their contention window approaches. If they can pull it together and win a playoff series, 2022-23 will turn into a bad dream. That would require Thomas and Kyrou to become point-a-game scorers and at least Parayko and Faulk to pull it together in their own end. Neither scenario is impossible.

If Thomas and Kyrou get stuck in neutral, and Central Division heavy-hitters Dallas and Colorado turn the St. Louis defense into Swiss cheese all year, it could mean curtains for Berube. Armstrong would be hard-pressed to find someone who would coax better results from a roster full of lengthy panic contracts.