Steen and Tarasenko will get LTIR’d
Lou Korac: St. Louis Blues GM Doug Armstrong on the salary cap impact of Alex Steen announcing that he will not be playing hockey anymore due to a back injury.
“The positive on that is that it doesn’t have to be spent in the next 48 hours. There’s in-season and off-season LTI room and it’s quite complicated. I have Ryan Miller, who we just made assistant general manager, that’s his field of expertise and we’re walking through all those different things knowing now that it is a reality.
But we could have some money to spend here between now and the start of the season when Alexander will go on the LTI or we could potentially move some money and get more money if we do it in-season. I don’t want to get too in-depth because it is complicated, but there could be opportunity for us to add players either prior to the season or into the season.”
On if Steen and Tarasenko will go on the LTIR.
“Yeah, what happens there we’ve obviously gone through all the medical stuff with him. He’s talked to our doctors, he’s talked to doctors in Sweden. We’ve come to the conclusion that there’s nothing he’s going to be able to do to get his back ready to play again. That doesn’t go on until he comes in and he hails the medical.
Vladi (Tarasenko) will fail the medical also, meaning they’re not ready to start. At that point, you can put them on LTI and that’s off-season LTI, which clears up different cap spaces. It’s a complicated formula, but he won’t go on the LTI either until training camp when he fails the medical or into the season and we do it. You can’t do it right now basically is what I’m trying to say.”
On Steen’s and Tarasenko’s injuries
Lou Korac: GM Armstrong on Steen who went back to Sweden after the bubble to rehab: “He and I had a lot of conversations on how that was coming. I’m thinking, ‘Give it some time, he’ll come back,’ and he says he can’t get out of the car, he can’t tie his shoes … So at that point, I understood that we had to be understanding that sometimes the clock runs out.”
Lou Korac: GM Armstrong on Tarasenko: “He’s doing very well. He’s on track. He’s here, he’s working out, he’s got a smile on his face. He’s a player to be around and have at the rink right now in the sense that he’s excited that the surgery went well and he sees the light at the end of the tunnel.”