The current state of the St. Louis Blues franchise is all the doing of general manager and president of hockey operations Doug Armstrong. He’s called the shots for the franchise since the 2010-11 season. Overall, it’s been a phenomenal era for the Blues with several playoff appearances, numerous trips past the first round, and a Stanley Cup.
However, ever since winning the Cup in 2019, many questions have come to light about Armstrong’s decisions with the roster. The track record for him since 2019 has been hit or miss, but the majority of the moves made have been misses to this point. Let’s look at a few missteps made by Armstrong since his team won the Cup in 2019.
Allowing Alex Pietrangelo to Walk in Free Agency
Former Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo was a cornerstone piece on the blue line for many seasons, and he was a major part of the team’s last great blue line in 2019. He’s also the first and only captain in franchise history to hoist the Cup. After the 2019-20 season, Pietrangelo entered the free agency market after not coming to terms on a contract extension to stay in St. Louis.
He signed a seven-year contract with the Vegas Golden Knights that carried an annual average value (AAV) of $8.8 million. On top of this, the Golden Knights also gave him a full no-movement clause, which protects him from being traded, waived, or sent to the minors without waiving the clause. That seemed to be the big deal breaker for the Blues, who were reportedly willing to give him a partial no-movement clause but didn’t want to go further than that. Vegas also gave Pietrangelo some serious signing bonus money to the tune of $35 million overall, and the Blues were not willing to match that.
Part of why this is such a mistake by Armstrong is who he replaced Pietraneglo with. They assumed Colton Parayko could slide into the number one role, which hasn’t worked, and Torey Krug could take over the main puck-moving skills on the power play. Neither Parayko nor Krug has panned out in the role of trying to replace what Pietrangelo brought to the team. After winning the Cup, I don’t think anybody would have blamed Armstrong for biting the bullet and bringing Pietrangelo back by any means necessary.
Armstrong’s Handling of the Blue Line
Even after allowing Pietrangelo to leave, Armstrong could have redeemed himself by fixing the blue line in other ways, but he mostly stayed in-house. He trusted Justin Faulk, Parayko, Krug, and Marco Scandella to be the core of this blue line. Overall, that plan has not worked out well with the Blues being outside of the top 15 in goals against in two of the past three seasons before 2023-24. Their defensive coverage has lacked with Parayko and Scandella mostly struggling in the past few seasons, and the fact that Krug has never been an above-average defender. Then, the trade for Nick Leddy happened.
Not only did the Blues move assets for an aging Leddy, they also chose to re-sign him to a four-year deal instead of re-signing veteran forward David Perron. He’s not a good enough defender to spend $4 million per season on. The idea that they chose Leddy over Perron to shore up the defense doesn’t make much sense. On top of that, they are paying Parayko a $6.5 million AAV and Scandella $3.275 million this season. The Blues have little to no cap flexibility due to these types of contracts on the back end. Currently, the eight rostered defensemen for the Blues take up over 35 percent of the cap. That would be a far better figure if they had better personnel to pay that money to.
Armstrong has made several mistakes in structuring the blue line and it’s been a major part of their downfall overall since 2019. They gave Parayko a long-term extension, but haven’t found a shutdown partner for him, which was a role played by now-retired blueliner Jay Bouwmeester. They overestimated the impacts of Faulk, Krug, Leddy, and Scandella, while also not giving enough opportunity to a youngster like Scott Perunovich until now.
Armstrong’s Poor Salary Cap Management
As mentioned above, a lot of the Blues cap issues come from the mishaps made with the blue line personnel, however, there are other issues to look into as well with the cap structure. Players like Brandon Saad and Brayden Schenn have been solid, but they are both getting older and making a combined $11 million for at least the next three seasons including this one.
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Goaltender Jordan Binnington is making $6 million right now and through the 2026-27 season, which ranks as the sixth most expensive active goaltender contract this season. He’s been good this season, but the past two have been disastrous and he’ll be 32 years old when the contract expires. The Blues have not been a good enough team since 2019 to have as little cap flexibility as they do, but that has been one of their main issues.
There have been a few quality moves by Armstrong since 2019, including the trade for Pavel Buchnevich, the extensions of Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou, the assets acquired at the 2023 trade deadline, and a few more. However, it’s hard to ignore the mismanagement of the cap and blue line overall. I still think he’s the proper man for the job, but there are several reasons to question what he’s done recently. They must find a way to clean their cap up and reshape the roster, but they aren’t actively trying to do that.
