2021-2022 S Blues Multi-Purpose Thread Part 3

[bleedblue1223]

Probably just depends on how ready the younger AHL guys are to play in a pinch. Can Kessel, Lyle, Tucker, etc. handle minutes if need be like Rosen did? I'm of the opinion that if we have to dig that deep into the depth chart, we are probably screwed anyway, or we'd make a move for a NHL level defenseman.

I think the AHL depth is good enough for what a typical season would need from it. Last season we used 10 dmen, more like 9 because Walman simply became Leddy.

 

[STL fan in MN]

While Scandella's injury is good for our cap situation, is anyone worried about our defensive depth after the top 8 now? We have 6 proven NHL players (whether you like them or not) in Parayko, Faulk, Leddy, Krug, Bortz and Mikkola. Our 7th is relatively unproven with 26 games, many of which we ran 7 D to shelter him heavily.

Our AHL D is lead by Rosen, who has 38 NHL games but looked serviceable as an 8th man last year. Then there is Santini who has a lot of NHL games, but didn't look serviceable in any of the 6 games he's played the last 2 years. The only other options are completely unproven guys who we don't even rank in our top 7 prospects with a prerry weak prospect pool (Kessel, Loof, Buchinger, Lyle, .

Maybe we should make a move for an AHL depth D? I have no faith in Perunovich to be able to play with only 6 D regularly, so if a couple more guys get hurt we are screwed. We have a lot of forward depth with Army signing every AHL-NHL tweener available. But we don't have near that depth on D.

It’s a concern but my guess is they look and see what they have in camp and then go from there. Where do the guys stack up? Do any of the depth guys surprise and put themselves in the picture as being an option for a future call-up?

As the saying goes, you can never have enough d-men but they’re also not super easy to acquire. Mr. Shotblock Kris Russell is still out there, as is Anton Stralman, but I’d prefer to just see what we have internally at this point.

If Perunovich shows he can stay healthy, I think we’ll be fine. If not, then yeah, we’re going to have depth issues at D.

 

[Brian39]

While Scandella's injury is good for our cap situation, is anyone worried about our defensive depth after the top 8 now? We have 6 proven NHL players (whether you like them or not) in Parayko, Faulk, Leddy, Krug, Bortz and Mikkola. Our 7th is relatively unproven with 26 games, many of which we ran 7 D to shelter him heavily.

Our AHL D is lead by Rosen, who has 38 NHL games but looked serviceable as an 8th man last year. Then there is Santini who has a lot of NHL games, but didn't look serviceable in any of the 6 games he's played the last 2 years. The only other options are completely unproven guys who we don't even rank in our top 7 prospects with a prerry weak prospect pool (Kessel, Loof, Buchinger, Lyle, .

Maybe we should make a move for an AHL depth D? I have no faith in Perunovich to be able to play with only 6 D regularly, so if a couple more guys get hurt we are screwed. We have a lot of forward depth with Army signing every AHL-NHL tweener available. But we don't have near that depth on D.

You can never have too many D and I certainly won't have an issue if we add another insurance policy back there. But I wouldn't be in a rush to do so at the moment. We need to see more than a handful of games from Perunovich to see if he can sink or swim, so he's going into the 6 man D lineup if there is one more injury (and probably some nights without injury). That means we're still 2 more injuries away from relying on an AHL call up in the lineup. I'm comfortable with Rosen being that 8th D man, so that added depth is insurance for the scenario where 3 more guys are simultaneously hurt.

That isn't something that screams immediate concern. If there is a guy still looking for an NHL contract that we like more than Santini (and can get through waivers) then let's go for it. If not, I don't want to sign a guy just to have another warm body. I'm comfortable scouring waivers if/when we start seeing a bunch of injuries.

 

[Majorityof1]

It’s a concern but my guess is they look and see what they have in camp and then go from there. Where do the guys stack up? Do any of the depth guys surprise and put themselves in the picture as being an option for a future call-up?

As the saying goes, you can never have enough d-men but they’re also not super easy to acquire. Mr. Shotblock Kris Russell is still out there, as is Anton Stralman, but I’d prefer to just see what we have internally at this point.

If Perunovich shows he can stay healthy, I think we’ll be fine. If not, then yeah, we’re going to have depth issues at D.

I guess that's the thing. I have a lot less faith in Perunovich than most of you....A LOT. For me its not, let's see if he can stay healthy and contribute. I am just waiting for him to play enough games that we can hopefully finally write him off. He's worse than Krug in every apsect, and expecially defense. And I am not a Krug fan. On my depth chart, Rosen is our 7th D, and Perunovich is buried so far down I'd call up next year's draft pick before I called him.

 

[STL fan in MN]

I guess that's the thing. I have a lot less faith in Perunovich than most of you....A LOT. For me its not, let's see if he can stay healthy and contribute. I am just waiting for him to play enough games that we can hopefully finally write him off. He's worse than Krug in every apsect, and expecially defense. And I am not a Krug fan. On my depth chart, Rosen is our 7th D, and Perunovich is buried so far down I'd call up next year's draft pick before I called him.

Wow, ok. Yeah, I definitely view Perunovich differently.

The last time we saw Perunovich, he came back from a pretty major wrist injury, hadn’t played in months and stepped right in to QB the #1 PP, getting an assist in each of his first 3 games back, finishing with 4 assists in 7 playoff games.

Yes, they sheltered him at 5 on 5 by dressing 7 D, but he was a rookie coming back from missing months. The sparks of potential are enormous. He’s played 26 games so I don’t get the desire to write him off. It’s been a while but I’d bet he’s looked better than Dunn did after 26 games. Sure, his D isn’t quite good enough after 26 games. But what about 100? 200? Where will he be then?

That’s where I see the value in Perunovich. He’s likely going to need to go though some bumps in the road as he solidified his game but as long as he can stay healthy, I see no reason why he can’t do that.

 

[CaliforniaBlues310]

I guess that's the thing. I have a lot less faith in Perunovich than most of you....A LOT. For me its not, let's see if he can stay healthy and contribute. I am just waiting for him to play enough games that we can hopefully finally write him off. He's worse than Krug in every apsect, and expecially defense. And I am not a Krug fan. On my depth chart, Rosen is our 7th D, and Perunovich is buried so far down I'd call up next year's draft pick before I called him.

Actively rooting for a player to fail..yikes

 

[Brian39]

Wow, ok. Yeah, I definitely view Perunovich differently.

The last time we saw Perunovich, he came back from a pretty major wrist injury, hadn’t played in months and stepped right in to QB the #1 PP, getting an assist in each of his first 3 games back, finishing with 4 assists in 7 playoff games.

He was also a -4 in those 7 games despite playing less than 11 minutes a night and starting in the offensive zone 88% of the time at even strength. He got passed up by Rosen on the depth chart during the playoffs. He was one of the most sheltered players in the league at even strength last year and looked well out of his depth most of the time that he didn't have the puck on his stick. I think he can grow into an NHL D man, but he isn't close to NHL caliber defensively at the moment.

He's going to get minutes this year if he can stay healthy, but the jury is definitely out on whether we can ice an effective 6 man D unit that includes him. He haven't been able to so far in his career.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

I guess that's the thing. I have a lot less faith in Perunovich than most of you....A LOT. For me its not, let's see if he can stay healthy and contribute. I am just waiting for him to play enough games that we can hopefully finally write him off. He's worse than Krug in every apsect, and expecially defense. And I am not a Krug fan. On my depth chart, Rosen is our 7th D, and Perunovich is buried so far down I'd call up next year's draft pick before I called him.

I am sort of in the same boat with you. I have little faith in Perunovich, so my expectations are not high, but I don't want him to fail like you do.

We knew going into the season that we have too many NHL D-men and that one of them was going to be eliminated. Scandella's injury alleviated the immediate pressure while not having to part with an asset just to dump his cap hit.

Perunovich needs to take a major step in his defensive play before I add him to the top-7. I also have Rosen as the #7.

Krug is one of those annoying "is what it is" things.

 

[Majorityof1]

Actively rooting for a player to fail..yikes

I am sort of in the same boat with you. I have little faith in Perunovich, so my expectations are not high, but I don't want him to fail like you do.

I am not rooting for him to fail. I think he has already failed. I am just hoping Blues management realizes it before he costs us too many games. If suddenly at 24 years old he learns to defend, I'll be ecstatic and gladly say how wrong I was. I just highly doubt it.

Wow, ok. Yeah, I definitely view Perunovich differently.

The last time we saw Perunovich, he came back from a pretty major wrist injury, hadn’t played in months and stepped right in to QB the #1 PP, getting an assist in each of his first 3 games back, finishing with 4 assists in 7 playoff games.

Yes, they sheltered him at 5 on 5 by dressing 7 D, but he was a rookie coming back from missing months. The sparks of potential are enormous. He’s played 26 games so I don’t get the desire to write him off. It’s been a while but I’d bet he’s looked better than Dunn did after 26 games. Sure, his D isn’t quite good enough after 26 games. But what about 100? 200? Where will he be then?

That’s where I see the value in Perunovich. He’s likely going to need to go though some bumps in the road as he solidified his game but as long as he can stay healthy, I see no reason why he can’t do that.

@Brian39 summed it up best. He's the only rookie we have sheltered that much, We never sheltered Mikkola that much. We never sheltered Walman, Schamltz or Dunn that much, abd aside from Dunn those guys are barely NHL caliber. We shelter Perunovich that much because while he is good offensively, he is god awful defensively.

I don't care if he is a great PP1 QB. Krug is a great PP1 QB. Faulk is a serviceable PP2 QB. Its not worth the defensive hit to have both Krug and Perunovich in the lineup.

Its not like he's a 18 or even 22 year old rookie. He's 24. His development time is behind him. Sure, injuries screwed up his development path a bit, but that's life. It sucks. But at 24 I am not looking at a player's potential. If they cannot adequately defend where i am comfortable playing them 14 minutes of 5v5 with at least 40% D-zone starts, then they are not worth having on the roster.

 

[BlueDream]

While Scandella's injury is good for our cap situation, is anyone worried about our defensive depth after the top 8 now? We have 6 proven NHL players (whether you like them or not) in Parayko, Faulk, Leddy, Krug, Bortz and Mikkola. Our 7th is relatively unproven with 26 games, many of which we ran 7 D to shelter him heavily.

Our AHL D is lead by Rosen, who has 38 NHL games but looked serviceable as an 8th man last year. Then there is Santini who has a lot of NHL games, but didn't look serviceable in any of the 6 games he's played the last 2 years. The only other options are completely unproven guys who we don't even rank in our top 7 prospects with a pretty weak prospect pool (Kessel, Loof, Buchinger, Lyle,) .

Maybe we should make a move for an AHL depth D? I have no faith in Perunovich to be able to play with only 6 D regularly, so if a couple more guys get hurt we are screwed. We have a lot of forward depth with Army signing every AHL-NHL tweener available. But we don't have near that depth on D.

No I’m not worried at all.

We have 8 d-men including Rosen, and Santini absolutely did look serviceable in his games, so that’s 9. You also didn’t mention Tucker who is probably NHL ready now, so we are 10 deep.

Also, depth defenseman are available ahead of the deadline every season. If we need to trade a pick for someone, we easily can…

It isn’t a concern.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

No I’m not worried at all.

We have 8 d-men including Rosen, and Santini absolutely did look serviceable in his games, so that’s 9. You also didn’t mention Tucker who is probably NHL ready now, so we are 10 deep.

Also, depth defenseman are available ahead of the deadline every season. If we need to trade a pick for someone, we easily can…

It isn’t a concern.

While I like Tucker, I'm not sure he's ready just yet. But, would love for him to be.

I think Kessel could be a player by the end of the season or beginning of next tho. I think he's going to be the one who Knocks Borts out of an Everyday role.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

I am not rooting for him to fail. I think he has already failed. I am just hoping Blues management realizes it before he costs us too many games. If suddenly at 24 years old he learns to defend, I'll be ecstatic and gladly say how wrong I was. I just highly doubt it.

Respectfully, I'll take back what I wrote.

You're just calling it the way you see it, much like what I did with Kostin a few years ago, which led to me being lambasted by HFBlues.

Cheers!

 

[PocketNines]

It's going to be apparent pretty quickly what the Blues have in Perunovich.

Let's say he had a great offseason, comes in finally ready to make a healthy impact and does. Shows he's at least as good as Krug defensively. Then it becomes find a way to move Krug to keep ROR. That's why we should want Perunovich to succeed.

If he comes in, gets 20 games of regular duty and still can't be trusted not to get caved defensively, then the Blues can move on from him but it doesn't benefit the team for him to bust.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

While Scandella's injury is good for our cap situation, is anyone worried about our defensive depth after the top 8 now? We have 6 proven NHL players (whether you like them or not) in Parayko, Faulk, Leddy, Krug, Bortz and Mikkola. Our 7th is relatively unproven with 26 games, many of which we ran 7 D to shelter him heavily.

Our AHL D is lead by Rosen, who has 38 NHL games but looked serviceable as an 8th man last year. Then there is Santini who has a lot of NHL games, but didn't look serviceable in any of the 6 games he's played the last 2 years. The only other options are completely unproven guys who we don't even rank in our top 7 prospects with a pretty weak prospect pool (Kessel, Loof, Buchinger, Lyle,) .

Maybe we should make a move for an AHL depth D? I have no faith in Perunovich to be able to play with only 6 D regularly, so if a couple more guys get hurt we are screwed. We have a lot of forward depth with Army signing every AHL-NHL tweener available. But we don't have near that depth on D.

I agree with what you're saying here, but I get the sense that the front office differs with your opinion about Perunovich. I think they ARE comfortable with him in a regular role. I'm not quite sure where that confidence comes from.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

It's going to be apparent pretty quickly what the Blues have in Perunovich.

Let's say he had a great offseason, comes in finally ready to make a healthy impact and does. Shows he's at least as good as Krug defensively. Then it becomes find a way to move Krug to keep ROR. That's why we should want Perunovich to succeed.

If he comes in, gets 20 games of regular duty and still can't be trusted not to get caved defensively, then the Blues can move on from him but it doesn't benefit the team for him to bust.

I think that bar is too high. Krug is an elite PP QB in the NHL. Perunovich could be a very good offensive D-man and be 'serviceable' on defense (a significant improvement). That would be enough to cement himself as a regular NHL defender, yet not be adequate to replace Krug. I wouldn't consider that a failure by Perunovich.

The problem is that the D corps as constituted leaves you scratching your head where to put him. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think its realistic for Perunovich to replace Krug 1 for 1 without having a drop off on the PP under the most likely scenario. Maybe its a justifiable sacrifice to free up money. But I think its more likely there would be a lot of hand-wringing on this board if we were watching that unfold. We were spoiled by the PP last year. Its unlikely it lives up to that again. I can see Scott become the whipping boy for that regression.

 

[BlueDream]

While I like Tucker, I'm not sure he's ready just yet. But, would love for him to be.

I think Kessel could be a player by the end of the season or beginning of next tho. I think he's going to be the one who Knocks Borts out of an Everyday role.

Well he’s 22 and has played a couple AHL seasons now and will of course get more games there to start the season. I’d think by midseason he would be ready.

 

[TK 421]

Our job is to escape the Central and that means we need all 3 pairings to be effective at achieving zone exits at the bare minimum. I don't want a D group that can win a round or two, I want one that can win 4 rounds to lift the Cup again. We have to go through Colorado to get out of the Central and that means putting together a 3rd pairing that won't be a major impediment to achieving that goal.

I think we need a legitimately good puck mover on that 3rd pair and I don't trust Perunovich to stay healthy which for me means acquiring that player in a trade.

 

[LGB]

I'm pretty confident in Perunovich as a 3rd pairing defenseman. I think he'll give that pair the transition ability it has lacked since we lost Dunn, and although he has physical limitations he's generally a pretty smart defender that gets a bad rap because of a few mistakes that almost all young players will make when they have so little NHL experience.

 

[BlueDream]

Our job is to escape the Central and that means we need all 3 pairings to be effective at achieving zone exits at the bare minimum. I don't want a D group that can win a round or two, I want one that can win 4 rounds to lift the Cup again. We have to go through Colorado to get out of the Central and that means putting together a 3rd pairing that won't be a major impediment to achieving that goal.

I think we need a legitimately good puck mover on that 3rd pair and I don't trust Perunovich to stay healthy which for me means acquiring that player in a trade.

Yeah that’s fine but we can wait and see before making that move. I don’t understand why there is all the sudden panic when we just lost a guy who everyone wanted to be traded anyways. There’s no rush to making a knee-jerk move.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Yeah that’s fine but we can wait and see before making that move. I don’t understand why there is all the sudden panic when we just lost a guy who everyone wanted to be traded anyways. There’s no rush to making a knee-jerk move.

Zackly. We all knew a subtraction was going to occur.

 

[TK 421]

Yeah that’s fine but we can wait and see before making that move. I don’t understand why there is all the sudden panic when we just lost a guy who everyone wanted to be traded anyways. There’s no rush to making a knee-jerk move.

I already wanted to upgrade on Scandella like most here but more specifically I think we need a puck mover on that pairing whether that means Perunovich or a trade and that was true even when Scandella was healthy. Let's say for instance that Scandella hadn't gotten injured, in that scenario I still wanted them to upgrade Bortuzzo. Basically whether Scandella was here or not I wanted a puck mover there on that 3rd pair.

You mentioned 'why the urgency?', well that's simple. I see the team being able to wait to activate Scandella until after the regular season is over and to me that represents an opportunity. Do we NEED that player now? Probably not right away but if I don't have confidence in Perunovich being that guy I'm sure you can understand why I'm looking outside the org at some point and I'm thinking, "Why wait?".

 

[STL fan in MN]

He was also a -4 in those 7 games despite playing less than 11 minutes a night and starting in the offensive zone 88% of the time at even strength. He got passed up by Rosen on the depth chart during the playoffs. He was one of the most sheltered players in the league at even strength last year and looked well out of his depth most of the time that he didn't have the puck on his stick. I think he can grow into an NHL D man, but he isn't close to NHL caliber defensively at the moment.

He's going to get minutes this year if he can stay healthy, but the jury is definitely out on whether we can ice an effective 6 man D unit that includes him. He haven't been able to so far in his career.

I’m aware of that. But again, we’re talking about a rookie who was inserted into the lineup after a long layoff. It was a very unfair ask and I think he did very well under the circumstances.

Maybe I’m being too easy on him but I don’t really care that much that he’s 24. Yeah, that’s fairly old for someone to have only played 26 total games. But that cuts both ways. Regardless of age, it was his first pro season and players need games to adjust. Just because he got older, it’s not like he was developing as he rehabbed his knee and wrist.

What I see is a typical offensive d-man who expectedly sucked defensively as a rookie. But so many before him have figured out the defensive aspect enough to become everyday NHLers. Just because Perunovich’s path has been delayed by injury, I don’t think there’s reason to think he can’t make those adjustments. His hockey sense is very good so clearly he’s a smart guy. He just needs to learn when to pick his spots. And that comes with experience.

Maybe he makes those adjustments and maybe he doesn’t, but I see no reason why he can’t.

 

[Majorityof1]

Yeah that’s fine but we can wait and see before making that move. I don’t understand why there is all the sudden panic when we just lost a guy who everyone wanted to be traded anyways. There’s no rush to making a knee-jerk move.

Where's the panic? I just said "Hey maybe we should sign a guy?". Its not like I was "OMFG the sky is falling", Just, we lost a guy, let's sign a guy. If we want to wait until after we evaluate guys in camp, that's fine. But why not throw a PTO out to Kris Russel or whoever. Give us a bench mark for how good those kids in camp are vs what we could get on the market now.

It also isn't reactionary to the Scandella injury. It's something I mentioned when we were signing all of the forward depth for the AHL. Scandella's injury just exacerbated it a bit.

As for Scandella being a guy we all wanted to trade. True, but we wanted to trade him because of his cap issues. He makes too much for what he is, a bottom pair guy. $3,275M for that is too much. If Scandella was paid $1M, nobody would want him gone. If we traded him, I'd have wanted to sign a different 3rd pairing guy for third pairing money. That's all I'm suggesting now, spend $750k-$1.2M on a guy we can rely on defensively if need be, but can also bury if the youngsters do step up.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

I’m aware of that. But again, we’re talking about a rookie who was inserted into the lineup after a long layoff. It was a very unfair ask and I think he did very well under the circumstances.

Maybe I’m being too easy on him but I don’t really care that much that he’s 24. Yeah, that’s fairly old for someone to have only played 26 total games. But that cuts both ways. Regardless of age, it was his first pro season and players need games to adjust. Just because he got older, it’s not like he was developing as he rehabbed his knee and wrist.

What I see is a typical offensive d-man who expectedly sucked defensively as a rookie. But so many before him have figured out the defensive aspect enough to become everyday NHLers. Just because Perunovich’s path has been delayed by injury, I don’t think there’s reason to think he can’t make those adjustments. His hockey sense is very good so clearly he’s a smart guy. He just needs to learn when to pick his spots. And that comes with experience.

Maybe he makes those adjustments and maybe he doesn’t, but I see no reason why he can’t.

Agreed. We don’t KNOW whether Peru can be a quality NHLer, but he clearly has great skill and guys who think game at his level are rare. Would love to see what he can do this year if he stays healthy. If he can’t handle it, we can deal with it then. But it’s unwise to write him off bc he struggled at times after he came back from longterm injury and immediately got thrown into heat of playoffs.

 

[Celtic Note]

Respectfully, I'll take back what I wrote.

You're just calling it the way you see it, much like what I did with Kostin a few years ago, which led to me being lambasted by HFBlues.

Cheers!

Was right there with you after Kostin’s year after the draft. The writing was clearly on the wall.