Free Agent Focus: St. Louis Blues

Free agency is now less than a month away, and teams are looking ahead to when it opens. Even with the UFA crop being thinned out in recent months, there will be some quality veterans set to hit the open market in July, while many teams also have key restricted free agents to re-sign. We continue our look around the NHL with an overview of the free agent situation for the Blues.

Key Restricted Free Agents

F Jonatan Berggren – Quietly one of the more useful depth additions of St. Louis’ season, Berggren arrived as a waiver-wire claim from the Detroit Red Wings and turned into a serviceable NHL contributor. The 25-year-old winger, a second-round pick of Detroit back in 2018, posted six goals and 16 points in 36 games with the Blues, impressive enough to profile as a capable bottom-six option on a team that will be entering a rebuild. Berggren more than justified the waiver claim, and re-signing him is an easy win: he’s a cheap, controllable scoring depth piece, and there’s every reason to think a bigger opportunity could bring out more from him.

D Matthew Kessel – A steady, no-frills right-shot defenseman, Kessel spent the year as St. Louis’ seventh blueliner, drawing in when injuries thinned the group and posting just three points across 29 games. The 25-year-old Arizona native, a fifth-round pick of the Blues in 2020, brings good size and reliable defensive habits without much offensive upside, and notably didn’t play a single game in the AHL this season, sticking on the NHL roster purely as depth insurance. Coming off an expiring $800K cap hit, he’s an easy, inexpensive qualifying-offer candidate to round out the organization’s defensive depth chart.

Other RFAs: F Mikhail Abramov, F Thomas Bordeleau, D Leo Loof

Key Unrestricted Free Agents

F Oskar Sundqvist – A familiar and respected face in St. Louis, Sundqvist returned for a second stint with the franchise he won the 2019 Stanley Cup alongside, but this season looked like the year the aging curve finally caught up. The 32-year-old put up a modest five goals and 17 points in 52 games while sliding down to a fourth-line, penalty-killing role, and the underlying numbers were rougher still; his shot-share and expected-goals metrics ranked at the very bottom among Blues regulars. He remains a willing, physical veteran who can play center or wing, but for a team committed to getting younger, it will be interesting to see how the Blues handle this.

D Justin Holl – Holl landed in St. Louis almost as an afterthought, arriving from Detroit at the trade deadline as a secondary piece in the deal that sent Justin Faulk to the Red Wings and brought back a prospect and a pair of draft picks. The veteran right-shot defenseman had spent the entire season to that point in the AHL for the first time in nearly a decade, then dressed for just nine games down the stretch with the Blues, chipping in two points while logging steady shutdown minutes. At 34 and a pending UFA, the 6-foot-4 blueliner is purely organizational depth at this point; a cheap re-sign isn’t out of the question, but there’s no urgency for a rebuilding club to bring him back.

Other UFAs: F Julien Gauthier, F Akil Thomas(Group-6), F Hugh McGing, D Hunter Skinner(Group-6), G Vadim Zherenko (Group-6)

Projected Cap Space

The Blues’ cap situation is one of the healthier ones in the league this summer. After falling out of the playoff race and selling at the deadline; trading captain Brayden Schenn to New York and shipping veteran defenseman Justin Faulk to Detroit for futures, St. Louis enters the offseason with the bulk of its young core already signed and a notably thin free-agent ledger, having handled its one RFA of consequence by re-signing Dylan Holloway to a five-year deal. With the salary cap set at $104MM and most of the roster locked in, the Blues project to carry roughly $15MM in space before accounting for their handful of qualifying offers, a figure that only climbs if veteran Torey Krug‘s $6.5MM hit lands on season-ending LTIR as expected. The bigger story, though, isn’t free agency at all: with a sell-and-rebuild mandate, Steen’s defining decisions will come on the trade market; most notably around winger Jordan Kyrou, whose future has dominated speculation even with a no-trade clause now in play. Goaltender Jordan Binnington, the subject of heavy deadline chatter before ultimately staying put in March, remains a possible secondary chip, and the Blues will also lean on a draft in which they hold three first-round picks (Nos. 11, 15 and 29).

Salary cap information via PuckPedia.