Blues confirm news about veteran defenseman

The Blues activated Justin Faulk from injured reserve on Friday afternoon, per a team announcement. To remain compliant with the 23-player limit on the active roster, the team returned winger Jakub Vrána to AHL Springfield in a corresponding transaction.

Faulk, 31, will likely play Saturday against the Bruins. He missed the last five games and 13 days with a lower-body injury. During that span, the Blues went 3-2-0 and stayed in the hunt for a wild-card spot in the Western Conference.

With Friday being the halfway point of the 2023-24 NHL schedule, Faulk is coincidentally at the exact halfway mark of the seven-year, $45.5M extension he signed with the Blues that began in the 2020-21 season. He’s in his fifth season as a Blue since coming over from the Hurricanes in a late-2019 offseason trade, accumulating 41 goals, 114 assists, 155 points and a 48.3% expected goals share at even strength, per Hockey Reference, in 318 games.

This season has been average for Faulk’s standards. Playing in 35 straight games to start the season before sustaining the injury late last month, Faulk had scored twice and added 15 assists for 17 points, or 0.49 points per game. That’s just north of his 0.47 career points per game mark. He’s again shouldered heavy minutes with average shot quality control metrics, averaging 22:25 per game while controlling 49% of expected goals at even strength, according to Hockey Reference data.

He’s most commonly factored in on a pairing with Torey Krug this season, which has been a mainstay since the latter joined the Blues in free agency in 2020. Their 537 minutes together is the 12th most of any defensive pairing this season, per MoneyPuck. That means 23-year-old call-up Matthew Kessel, who’s played in five straight games alongside Krug in Faulk’s absence, will likely be a healthy scratch against Krug’s former team this weekend.

Notably, though, the Blues chose to keep Kessel on the active roster instead of returning him to Springfield with Faulk back in the lineup. The 2020 fifth-round pick is still waiver-exempt, so there’s no risk of losing him on the wire by keeping him around as a healthy scratch. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound right-shot blueliner is still looking for his first NHL point but posted decent possession metrics in a small sample alongside Krug, averaging 17:34 per game. Nearly all those minutes game at even strength, as Kessel saw less than a minute combined of ice time on the power play and penalty kill during his stint in the lineup.

Heading down to the minors instead is Vrána, who does not yet need waivers again after he cleared them nearly one month ago. The 27-year-old posted over a point per game in Springfield after being sent down, including scoring four times in his last five games before the Blues summoned him back to the roster eight days ago.

Unfortunately, the 2014 first-round pick was unable to convert that momentum into regaining a full-time NHL role. He played two games during his call-up, the latter of which was a poor performance in a 5-1 loss to the Panthers on Tuesday that saw him post a -3 rating in just over ten minutes of ice time. Interim head coach Drew Bannister scratched Vrána in Thursday's 5-2 win over the Metropolitan Division-leading Rangers, allowing Sammy Blais to re-enter the lineup against his former team.

Vrána is in the final season of a three-year, $15.75M contract carrying a $5.25M signed with the Red Wings following an arbitration filing in 2021. The Blues only have him at a $2.625M cap hit after trading for him with 50% salary retention by Detroit, but that still exceeds this season’s buried threshold of $1.15M. Thus, the Blues are still on the hook for $1.475M against the cap when Vrána is stashed in the minors.