St Louis Times Picayuune (AP) - Ok, its not all arena football and grilling hotdogs in the summer for this intrepid reporter. Once in a while you need to produce a hard hitting Pulitzer winning expose to keep the editors of this venerable old paper happy.
This is not one of those articles.
But between choking back delicious overly processed meat while watching football, we needed to catch up on the St Louis offseason.
As I've stated at the end of last season, hot play or not the Blues missed the playoffs despite high expectations by the fans and management. This year its looking likely that the Blue's will miss the playoffs again, however the expectations are not high.
This team will be younger, probably have a little less skill, have more possibilities for camp battles with younger players.
At this point in the offseason the Blue's are looking at a lineup of:
Duclair (73) Reinhart (72) Loughton (71)
Stephenson (72) RNH (74) Puljujarvi (70)
Ennis (69) Appleton (69) Ryan (69)
Ladd (64) Joshua (62) Archibald (68)
McAvoy (76) Fowler (71)
Ferraro (70) De Haan (69)
Clifton (67) MacDermid (66)
Bobrovsky (85)
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There are some interesting pieces, McAvoy is probably a top 5-10 defenseman in this league. Poolparty returns to the league after a punishing year in the minors, riding buses, sitting by the pee hole, and scarfing down cold tacos for dinner. Reinhart who had a strong season after he arrived in a trade is expected to drive the first line offense, and Sergei Bobrovsky is on the case in St Louis and has been issued a badge and a gun, which is bad news for forwards trying to screen him.
In terms of futures, there were a few players that stood out in the minors last year and could challenge for a spot with the big team.
Joel L'esperance C (64)
Peter Cehlarik LW (63)
Egor Sokolov RW (65)
Dylan Coghlan D (66)
Connor Mackay D (64)
Urho Vaakanainen D (65)
Evan Fitzpatrick (G) 74
The question is what Crunch is going to do going forward, in terms of the draft he has a few mid level picks, so its likely that there isn't help coming from the farm. So the Blue's are going to have to look at the free agent route and look at getting a back up goalie and a depth forward that can play middle 6 to push someone down the lineup. The question is, do the Blue's have the dough to go big game hunting. It depends the Blue's have several upcoming RFA's and its expected that most of them will be back, so here's a look at the rosster with its cap implications.
The other option is trades and the Blue's might try to move some of their prospects of futures to secure what they need.
Ragging the puck - With the players dispersed for the summer break GM Captain Crunch took part in the Surf shooting world Championship in Hawaii, where he finished in 241st place after accidentally blasting celebrity judge Pamela Anderson, The search continues for a new head coach. Rumor has it that Charlie Bombay was seen at the St Louis Blue's offices.
St Louis off season catchup
