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What We Learned: St. Louis Blues bungle another player decision

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

On Friday afternoon, the St. Louis Blues extended Patrik Berglund for five years and $3.85 million.

It goes without saying that it’s easy to get your mind stuck in the past a little bit, when $3.85 million was a pretty good-sized amount of money in the NHL’s cap structure. These days it’s only a little more than 5 percent of the total cap, so it’s not a killer or anything.

But this deal in particular also isn’t a good idea.

For one thing, there’s the term. Five years for what will be a 29-year-old middle-six forward who netted 137 points in his previous 327 games before the season started — about 34 per 82 games — doesn’t seem like a good investment.

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And he’s on pace for less than that this year, by the way. He has 17-7-24 in 60 games, which puts him at about 33 points. To be fair, it will be his first time clearing 30 points since 2013-14. Which, hey wait a second, why do you give that guy five years and a $150,000 raise on his current deal?

Well, you’ll never ever guess what happened. From Feb. 4-11, Berglund scored six goals in five games, including a hat trick at Montreal. So it turns out GM Doug Armstrong bought about as high as he possibly could on a player who’s fifth in 5-on-5 ice time on his team and drives possession a little bit, but whose primary production falls somewhere between that of Kyle Brodziak and the ghost of Alex Steen’s career.

Again, the money isn’t totally horrible but there’s also no need whatsoever to give out this contract. A raise is unjustifiable, but it’s minimal. The term is unconscionable. And it’s not the first time Armstrong has shown little to no understanding of how to evaluate his own players.

Look at the other big issue facing the Blues right now: The will-they-won’t-they with Kevin Shattenkirk. Trade him? Keep him? It’s been going on for years now. And while everyone has been praising Alex Pietrangelo to the heavens, he has consistently been the third-best defenseman on this team for two years now, behind both Colton Parayko and Shattenkirk. Why the hurry to offload a guy who drives your offense that much? He leads the Blues ‘D’ in primary points per 60 minutes across all situations the last two seasons, and by a sizable margin: The gap between Shattenkirk and Parayko is roughly equivalent to the gap between Parayko and Jay Bouwmeester.

Well, part of the reason for the do-si-do with Shattenkirk is obviously money, because he’s reportedly rejecting six years and $7 million AAV offers left, right, and center from potential suitors. The Blues don’t really have the cap space to make that work because Parayko needs a new contract this summer as well.

After the new Berglund deal, the Blues have about $8.5 million in cap space for next season with 18 players signed. Parayko needs a new deal, which should consume a huge chunk of that space. So yeah, you can argue Shattenkirk just got squeezed out by the flat cap.

But you know what would help them afford Shattenkirk — who in fact is fourth in the League in all-situations points per 60 over the past two seasons, behind only Burns, Hedman, and Hamilton — going forward?

If the middle of their lineup wasn’t glutted with wastes of money like Berglund.

After all, it wasn’t so long ago that the Blues gave Alex Steen, a fine player at the time, a huge new contract because he scored 24 goals in the first 34 games of the 2013-14 season. His career high to that point had been 24, rather coincidentally. What the Blues got in the three years over which that contract spanned has been the definition of diminishing returns: 24-40-64 the first year (very good!), 17-35-52 the second (also pretty good!), and then this year just12-27-39, and without the possession numbers that always made that contract stronger getting worse.

And they extended him for basically the same money and three more years before this season even started. That’s beginning to look like rather a bad investment in terms of on-ice value delivered per dollar, especially because Steen is almost 33 even before the new deal starts and has missed time in each of the past three seasons.

According to Corsica’s Similarity Calculator, the player Steen’s current season looks like most across all current statistical categories is Chuck Kobasew in 2007-08. (For the record, Berglund’s current closest comparable is last year’s version of Nick Bjugstad.) If people don’t like how Steen’s $5.8 million AAV looks now, wait until he’s 36 and still making $5.75 million.

And I mean, you can do this all day with the Blues roster. When I initially said I didn’t like the Berglund extension, a lot of Blues fans were quick to point of that it’s not as bad as having Jori Lehtera signed for two more seasons at $4.7 million. In point of fact, both deals can be ill-advised simultaneously. Lehtera signed that deal when he was coming off a 14-30-44 season as he broke into the NHL at age 27. Only on Feb. 16 did he surpass his goal production from that first season, netting his 16th in 132 games against the Canucks.

Armstrong, it seems, always wants to buy as high as possible but is never really content with the few bargains he’s put on his roster. After all, look at the Blues goaltending debacle this season that cost a legendary coach his job; it’s easily avoidable if Armstrong sticks with Brian Elliott, who did nothing but deliver sterling performances for the Blues (.925 in 181 games).

Elliott was perceived as not-good-enough in 2014, so Armstrong brought in Ryan Miller, who imploded hilariously (.903 in 19 games in the regular season, .897 in six in the postseason) and was never going to stick around even if he hadn’t. Then Armstrong got Martin Brodeur (.899 in seven appearances) because he thought Elliott wasn’t good enough. Then Armstrong decided he would platoon Elliott (.930 in 42 games last season) with Allen (.920 in 47), and it worked pretty well even if the wrong guy was the 1b. And when it came time to make a decision, he traded Elliott to Calgary, only to see the goalie sign for $2.5 million against the cap.

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So when it comes to the Blues, you can expect one thing above all others: Armstrong will not properly assess your quality before deciding how to deal with your contract situation. That seems like something to which you can set your watch.

It also seems like a big problem for the team going forward.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Seems like potentially a lot to give up for Patrick Eaves, but he’s a good player and they needed a lot of help in attack.

Arizona Coyotes: They should trade Shane Doan but they never ever will.

Boston Bruins: Don Sweeney is a damn genius. He’s gonna stand pat at the deadline. Incredible job preservation. If you don’t make moves and you’re in “evaluation mode” you keep your job even longer! You can tell my man went to Harvard.

Buffalo Sabres: A loss to the Avs, even coming out of the bye week, still isn’t in any way excusable.

Calgary Flames: They really ought to take him up on this.

Carolina Hurricanes: Bad take on a team that is clearly improving sharply.

Chicago: Tomas Jurco will really fit in with this team’s culture; like Jonathan Toews, he’s been sacrificing offense to play defense so much this year and that’s why he doesn’t have literally any points.

Colorado Avalanche: This is me doing the thinking guy emoji.

Columbus Blue Jackets: John Tortorella is such a good coach. He told his team to score a lot of goals after the bye week and not allow any. That’s just smart.

Dallas Stars: Love games with built-in excuses.

Detroit Red Wings: Their GM. Next question.

Edmonton Oilers: Yeah the Oilers should definitely trade for this unbelievable defenseman who probably isn’t actually on the market.

Florida Panthers: Is that… no it couldn’t be. It’s depth scoring? For the Panthers?

Los Angeles Kings: Watch this team go on a run and everyone says it’s because Quick is the best goalie alive.

Minnesota Wild: Zoinks am I getting sick of hearing about the bye like it’s haunting an abandoned amusement park that four teens and a talking dog have to go investigate.

Montreal Canadiens: Not sure if you guys have heard, but they like it when the Habs coach speaks a little language we all know and love that is called French.

Nashville Predators: These are my good boys.

New Jersey Devils: It took an OT loss to the Rangers to tell you this?

New York Islanders: I’m crying over here.

New York Rangers: If it only costs you a first and JT Miller to get Kevin Shattenkirk, that’s a trade you make every time.

Ottawa Senators: This is my son.

Philadelphia Flyers: Get this guy out of the damn league already.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Honestly, Crosby is having an incredible season. Feels like we’re not talking about that enough.

San Jose Sharks: Yup. Correct take here.

St. Louis Blues: Shattenkirk can’t win.

Tampa Bay Lightning: So much about the Lightning’s recent success boils down to Jonathan Drouin playing in video game mode.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Now that’s a good American boy.

Vancouver Canucks: Why do the Canucks stink “all of a sudden?” Oh yeah, the uh… mumps.

Vegas Golden Knights: How much of “being busy” is just George McPhee sitting around in his office frowning at a computer?

Washington Capitals: Shoutout to Barry Trotz in advance because I will probably forget about that whole “700 wins” thing when it actually happens.

Winnipeg Jets: The future is kinda bright in Winnipeg, which is what happens when you never make the playoffs.

Play of the Weekend

Henrik Borgstrom is a Panthers prospect.

Gold Star Award

The real stars of the League are the live penguins at the outdoor game. I want to hug and kiss them all.

Minus of the Weekend

The Ducks tweeting that one-punch on Jeff Carter like “haha this was so cool” is a pretty good illustration of how fighting in hockey and anyone who likes it are so stupid.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “SHANNYPLAN” is a guy who I have no idea what city he’s from at all. No idea. Impossible to tell.

Wayne Simmonds

for

James VanRiemsdyk
Andreas Johnsson
1st 2017 (cond) or 2nd

Signoff

C

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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