Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Big Daddy Kane on the St. Louis Blues.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: ” … There are only five players on that St. Louis Blues team from the 2019 Stanley Cup Final. Five players who played in that Game 7 I should say that are still on this team. Like this has been the teardown of a Stanley Cup Champion here in a few seasons.
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What do you think this now means for maybe some of the older players on the St. Louis Blues? Maybe some players that have term attached to them because this was a team that you know lost Alex Pietrangelo, they were still trying to load up and still go for it.
Hasn’t work so I guess one of the questions now for St. Louis is, how much of a step back do they take here?
Friedman: “I think that’s a great question. They’ve got three first-round picks this year. They got theirs. They got the one from the (Vladimir) Tarasenko deal and now they got the one from the Toronto deal.
What are they going to do with those? Someone said to me (Saturday) night, if St. Louis wanted to make this quick, they could probably trade for (Timo) Meier. Now I don’t know if I see that happening Jeff, but I thought about it.
I think it’s going to be really interesting to see what the Blues do because, like obviously, I don’t think (Brayden) Schenn is going anywhere. And I don’t think (Pavel) Buchnevich is going anywhere.
I do think it’s possible one of their D could go somewhere but they all have control over where they get moved. They all have clauses.
I’m really curious to see what the Blues lineup is going to look like at the deadline because (a) they could make this really quick if they wanted to this summer. They’re going to have flexibility. They’re going to have all these picks and they’ve got an organization that I don’t think is interested a long, long, long rebuilds. They tend to be aggressive. The GM is very aggressive.
The thing I like about Armstrong is, he’s not afraid to make tough decisions. I don’t always agree with them. But he’s not afraid. I don’t think in this league as a general manager you can be afraid to make tough decisions.
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Marek: “You know it is interesting as we talk so much about timelines. We talked about the Vancouver Canucks and the idea of timelines and whose timeline are you doing this on, right now. And we focus on (Elias) Pettersson and we focus on (Quinn) Hughes etc. Those are the obvious ones.
When you look at the St. Louis Blues, you say to yourself, it makes obviously the most sense that they’re doing this on the Robert Thomas, Jordan Kyrou timeline. So if you don’t fit that timeline, how much of a spot is there for you on this team? I’m not saying there’s not a spot for a 29-year-old or a 31-year-old on the Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas timeline. I just don’t know how many of those players you can have.
Certainly, you can have one, maybe you can have a couple but I just don’t know if you can populate much of your roster with players that don’t complement that timeline. If that is indeed as we suspect so that, that is how St. Louis is going to this thing. You know what I mean.”
Friedman: “Yeah, I totally understand. I totally understand where you’re coming from. Totally understand.