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Blues Fall Off a Cliff

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 Hockey seasons will have their ups and downs. For whatever reason, be it injuries, a challenging schedule, an inexplicable loss of form, it is difficult for teams to maintain a good level of compete for an entire season. The good teams just limit their funks. The St. Louis Blues, however, are not a good team. They are a poor team, and poor teams sink under the weight of "here we go again" night after night. 

I will admit I only watched the first two periods of last night's 5-0 loss to a Colorado team that had been scuffling of late. Two periods were more than enough to get the gist of it. It was also enough to lead me to a diagnosis as to what ails the team. It isn't that they are young and are going through growing pains. No, the reason the Blues are so bad is that the veterans who are being paid to be the backbone of this team are not doing their jobs. I'm talking about Schenn, Buchnevich, Faulk, and even Binnington and Parayko. Over $30M of the salary cap is being spent on those players and the return, especially for Schenn, Buchnevich and Faulk, has been negligible. Something has to give.




Looking over the contracts involved it seems as if Buchnevich is the one to be moved. For starters both Schenn and Faulk have complete no-trade clauses in effect; Buchnevich has a partial one. Also, Buchnevich's contract increases to $8M a year and a full no-trade kicks in starting next season. So, it is now or never with him. He should still have decent value and hold some attraction for teams gearing up for a Stanley Cup run. We won't get a king's ransom for him, but it should be better than nothing.

The other player they should consider moving is Cam Fowler, not because he has done anything wrong but because he has done so much right. He showed he can contribute a lot, and honestly, the Blues would be doing the player a solid by moving him to a team with more of a chance to win. 

The Blues should let the league know that they will listen to offers for any of their 28 years old or older players. None of those players, including Binnington, will be important players for the next really good Blues team. The franchise needs to look to the future because the present is nothing but futility.   

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