On the St. Louis Blues …
- Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The Blues have been in the rumor mill a lot lately. The Blues may not be able to afford defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk when his contract expires after next season, and has reportedly been available since this past offseason for the right price.The Blues and Lightning have been scouting each other, with the Blues being tied to Jonathan Drouin.The Blues offense ranks 21st in the league at 2.46 goals per game. They’ve lost 167 man games to injury. Some injured players could be returning after the All-Star break, which is four games away.
“It’s easier to trade when you know what you have,” Armstrong said. “Right now it’s very difficult to tell with six and seven guys out, what you need, because you’re just treading water. I’m going to let the team evolve when it gets back. Hopefully we just get down to maybe just one or two guys out a few weeks before the trade deadline, so we’ll have a good look.”
Robby Fabbri’s name has also been in the rumor mill – tied to Drouin speculation.
“I think any trade, whether it’s a younger player or an older player, you use your scouting staff to evaluate,” Armstrong said. “You look at it short-, medium- and long-term. You go back all the way to their American Hockey League days or their junior days and you gain as much information as possible and you try to make an educated guess based on history. That’s why the Columbus-Nashville trade (Ryan Johansen for Seth Jones) is a great trade. They’re two legitimate players that teams made decisions on. It’ll be fun to watch and see how it unfolds.”
It appears that Blues may hold pat for now.
“It’s difficult to trade because there’s not many teams that believe they can’t take a big push and get into the playoffs,” Armstrong said. “So you haven’t had the buyer-seller thing yet. There are hockey trades going on, but some of these things take weeks or months to put together.
“If we’re going to make changes, it’ll probably be a hockey trade. I don’t see it being a veteran player coming in and a young player going out or a young player coming and a veteran going out. We’re not in the ‘sell or buy’ mode, we’re in the ‘play for now’ mode. I like our depth, I like our group, we’ll see how it plays out.”
On the Vancouver Canucks …
- The Fourth Period: The Canucks are heading towards a youth movement, and they could look to moving veterans in Chris Higgins, Dan Hamhuis, Brandon Prust, Yannick Weber and Radim Vrbata.
- Alex Burrows has a year left on his deal, and holds a no-trade clause, but there is a chance the Canucks could get calls on him. GM Jim Benning could get more for Burrows this year than he would next year.