2022-2023 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread

[bleedblue1223]

LaCombe out of Minnesota is a very real possibility.

LaCombe said he's signing with the Ducks when the season is over.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

Anyone want to wager that Strickland is talking out of his ass?

 

[542365]

Anyone want to wager that Strickland is talking out of his ass?

Almost certainly. If the Blues sign one, he says "See, told ya so", and if not it's an easy, "They were right there until the end, but Team X was more appealing because...."

 

[bleedblue1223]

Anyone want to wager that Strickland is talking out of his ass?

He's always been decently connected to NCAA, and if you take the whole Tkachuk fiasco out, he's been a very good insider over the past couple years.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

He's always been decently connected to NCAA, and if you take the whole Tkachuk fiasco out, he's been a very good insider over the past couple years.

He also said O'Reilly's agent was coming to St. Louis to meet with Army "next week" presumably about an extension two days before ROR got dealt. There's been other things in the past too. Who was the Blues player that was seen hugging his teammates goodbye at the airport?

 

[tfriede2]

He also said O'Reilly's agent was coming to St. Louis to meet with Army "next week" presumably about an extension two days before ROR got dealt. There's been other things in the past too. Who was the Blues player that was seen hugging his teammates goodbye at the airport?

He still could have been right about ROR’s agent…I don’t see why ROR being traded before that trip could happen makes Strickland incorrect.

 

[bleedblue1223]

And I don't think he said he was coming in town specifically for extension talks, I remember hearing when the trade went down, his agent was coming in town to assist with everything. Agents are there for more than just contract negotiations.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

I’m still upset with the whole Tkachuk fiasco so you might be right. I still question his sources.

 

[bleedblue1223]

I’m still upset with the whole Tkachuk fiasco so you might be right. I still question his sources.

Yeah, I wouldn't argue he's the most reliable, but he's somewhere in the middle of the high-end insiders and Eklund.

 

[STL fan in MN]

LaCombe out of Minnesota is a very real possibility. Also, Ryan Johnson out of Minnesota - recall this is the 1st round pick we sent to Buffalo in the ROR trade - that would be funny if we sign him.

I’m all for this.

Remember, I’m the guy that would push for 4.07% retention instead of 4% just to screw with the accounting dept to entertain myself so I’d definitely be up for screwing with the Sabres just to entertain myself.

And also, Johnson’s a decent D prospect.

But wouldn’t we have to wait until Aug 31 for him? Pretty sure the only guys we could sign right away are the ones that were never drafted.

 

[bleedblue1223]

I’m all for this.

Remember, I’m the guy that would push for 4.07% retention instead of 4% just to screw with the accounting dept to entertain myself so I’d definitely be up for screwing with the Sabres just to entertain myself.

And also, Johnson’s a decent D prospect.

But wouldn’t we have to wait until Aug 31 for him? Pretty sure the only guys we could sign right away are the ones that were never drafted.

Yeah, I wouldn't assume those guys are available, unless they announce they are becoming a free agent like Thrun did and others in the past have. We'd likely know by know if a drafted college player wasn't going to sign with the team that drafted them.

 

[Mike Liut]

Kap looked better last night than Tarasenko looked all year.

 

[Xerloris]

that is a roundabout way of saying that letang was simply better. which is fine, because letang is borderline HOFer.

Anyone that can survive let alone still play in the NHL after 2 strokes is a HoF'er regardless.

I’m still upset with the whole Tkachuk fiasco so you might be right. I still question his sources.

Why? Tkachuk himself said he wanted to come to St.Louis but he knew his contract demands would not work here and that's why he signed with Florida. You can say everything perfectly but until a contract is sitting in your lap and all you have to do is sign it to make 80 million dollars you don't really know how much you want to play for one specific team.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Blais extended. 1 x 1.

 

[Brian39]

Why? Tkachuk himself said he wanted to come to St.Louis but he knew his contract demands would not work here and that's why he signed with Florida. You can say everything perfectly but until a contract is sitting in your lap and all you have to do is sign it to make 80 million dollars you don't really know how much you want to play for one specific team.

All the more reason why a 'journalist' shouldn't make guarantees about the upcoming decisions of players they cover.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

Blais extended. 1 x 1.

Good

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

All the more reason why a 'journalist' shouldn't make guarantees about the upcoming decisions of players they cover.

Strick is a journalist? I thought he was just a tool..

 

[Reality Czech]

All the more reason why a 'journalist' shouldn't make guarantees about the decisions of players they cover.

Why do people care so much what Strick said about Tkachuk? It was his own personal opinion, not something he heard from sources, and he guessed wrong...so what? No one is right 100% of the time. Strick's podcast with Cam Janssen is very informative and entertaining and he's a passionate Blues fan. Not sure why he gets so much hate.

 

[STL fan in MN]

Blais extended. 1 x 1.

Sweet!

Getting him signed should increase his value so we should now be able to package him with a 2nd for a player like Alex DeBrincat.

Based on past precedence, that’s my understanding of the cost of that caliber of player.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Strick is a journalist? I thought he was just a tool..

I give the guy credit. He took some obscure blogging and a few limited inside sources, and parlayed into a TV gig for a guy who does not exactly exude TV qualities.

But it is just dumb to make guarantee statements like he did.

 

[Brian39]

I think there is a case to be made for buying out Krug this summer. I don't expect it to happen and this front office and ownership group clearly doesn't like buyouts.

However, the team's financials are about to take a massive hit. Season ticket renewals are obviously going to go down barring a draft lottery win. Single game tickets are going to decrease barring a major turnaround. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed that the Blues are advertising ticket deals better than anything offered last year and that tickets on the second hand market have gone way down in price. Even if next year isn't a tank, ticket sales are going to be softer than they've been recently.

Possibly more importantly is the Bally Sports situation. Maybe we re-structure the existing deal. Maybe this is the end for Bally Sports Midwest and the team has to find a new RSN (and/or explore a streaming service). Maybe the team has to produce the games without a provider and sell them directly to consumers. I don't know what the future will hold, but I am confident that the short-term outcome is that the Blues will make less money from their TV rights in 2022/23 than are now. And negotiating whatever they do next will be markedly harder if the team sucks. There was no way to predict that the team was going to have to re-sell its TV rights in 2023, but here we are.

Together this could mean tens of millions less revenue for the team than this year. Which is awful timing, because a lot of players are getting big raises and I'm not just talking about the new contracts kicking in for Thomas and Kyrou. Let's talk about our 10 biggest contracts next year compared to our 10 biggest contracts this year.

8 guys are in our top 10 biggest contracts for both 2022/23 and 2023/24. In real dollars, Schenn, Buch, Saad, Faulk, Parayko, Krug, Leddy, and Binner will make $9.5M more next season than they did last season.

The other 2 spots are different. ROR and Tarasenko rounded out our top 10 biggest contracts this year while Thomas and Kyrou will round out the top 10 next year. Thomas and Kyrou only make $1.25M against the cap than ROR/Tarasenko did, but they will make $6.5M in real dollars next year than Tarasenko/ROR did this year.

All told, despite our top 10 contracts only counting for an extra $1.25M against the cap next year, the team will be paying $16M more in real dollars for its highest paid 10 guys than they did this year.

This organization pushed a lot of salary off until 2023/24 to get through the losses in revenue brought on by COVID. This was also likely driven by players who wanted to delay big paydays until the escrow rates went down. It looked like a win-win for everyone, but no one expected the team to crater this badly and no one expected the TV money to evaporate.

Ownership doesn't like paying guys not to play for the team, but there is a real chance that this team needs to cut payroll next season if you can't bank on putting 18,000 fans in the seats on a regular basis. Krug's contract is structured perfectly for a buyout this summer. With a buyout, we would owe him $2.46M a year for each of the next 8 years in real dollars. Yes, it doubles the length of time you're paying him, but that is a $6M savings in 23/24 and another $6M in savings in 24/25 when money might be genuinely tight for the organization.

There is a real argument that from a financial standpoint, the team is better of paying him $19.6M over 8 years not to play here than it is paying him $29.5M over 4 years to play here.

From a cap point of view, a buyout saves us $6M against the cap in 23/24 and 24/25. We would take a hit of just $458k in those seasons. We would then take $2.5M a year for each of the following 6 seasons (with a one-off $2.9M hit in 26/27). 8 years of cap hits is a lot, but given our current cap structure, the organization's desire to not do a multi-year tank, and the likelihood of the cap increasing a substantial amount by year 5, I'd argue that $2.5M a year for an extra 4 years would hurt the team less than the immediate help of freeing up $6M a year for each of the next 2 years.

Trading him without retention should be plan A. Trading him with retention should be plan B. But I think that a buyout this summer is a viable plan C. It's easy to say that when it isn't $20M of my money, but an immediate savings of $6M a year in what could be this ownership groups most difficult fiscal years would be a big deal.

 

[bleedblue1223]

Yeah, I don't think we should underestimate the impact of Bally across all sports.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Yeah, I don't think we should underestimate the impact of Bally across all sports.

it's not just bally. root sports is in trouble too. cap isn't going to go up as fast as had been projected if most of league doesn't get local tv money they were counting.

 

[MissouriMook]

I think there is a case to be made for buying out Krug this summer. I don't expect it to happen and this front office and ownership group clearly doesn't like buyouts.

However, the team's financials are about to take a massive hit. Season ticket renewals are obviously going to go down barring a draft lottery win. Single game tickets are going to decrease barring a major turnaround. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed that the Blues are advertising ticket deals better than anything offered last year and that tickets on the second hand market have gone way down in price. Even if next year isn't a tank, ticket sales are going to be softer than they've been recently.

Possibly more importantly is the Bally Sports situation. Maybe we re-structure the existing deal. Maybe this is the end for Bally Sports Midwest and the team has to find a new RSN (and/or explore a streaming service). Maybe the team has to produce the games without a provider and sell them directly to consumers. I don't know what the future will hold, but I am confident that the short-term outcome is that the Blues will make less money from their TV rights in 2022/23 than are now. And negotiating whatever they do next will be markedly harder if the team sucks. There was no way to predict that the team was going to have to re-sell its TV rights in 2023, but here we are.

Together this could mean tens of millions less revenue for the team than this year. Which is awful timing, because a lot of players are getting big raises and I'm not just talking about the new contracts kicking in for Thomas and Kyrou. Let's talk about our 10 biggest contracts next year compared to our 10 biggest contracts this year.

8 guys are in our top 10 biggest contracts for both 2022/23 and 2023/24. In real dollars, Schenn, Buch, Saad, Faulk, Parayko, Krug, Leddy, and Binner will make $9.5M more next season than they did last season.

The other 2 spots are different. ROR and Tarasenko rounded out our top 10 biggest contracts this year while Thomas and Kyrou will round out the top 10 next year. Thomas and Kyrou only make $1.25M against the cap than ROR/Tarasenko did, but they will make $6.5M in real dollars next year than Tarasenko/ROR did this year.

All told, despite our top 10 contracts only counting for an extra $1.25M against the cap next year, the team will be paying $16M more in real dollars for its highest paid 10 guys than they did this year.

This organization pushed a lot of salary off until 2023/24 to get through the losses in revenue brought on by COVID. This was also likely driven by players who wanted to delay big paydays until the escrow rates went down. It looked like a win-win for everyone, but no one expected the team to crater this badly and no one expected the TV money to evaporate.

Ownership doesn't like paying guys not to play for the team, but there is a real chance that this team needs to cut payroll next season if you can't bank on putting 18,000 fans in the seats on a regular basis. Krug's contract is structured perfectly for a buyout this summer. With a buyout, we would owe him $2.46M a year for each of the next 8 years in real dollars. Yes, it doubles the length of time you're paying him, but that is a $6M savings in 23/24 and another $6M in savings in 24/25 when money might be genuinely tight for the organization.

There is a real argument that from a financial standpoint, the team is better of paying him $19.6M over 8 years not to play here than it is paying him $29.5M over 4 years to play here.

From a cap point of view, a buyout saves us $6M against the cap in 23/24 and 24/25. We would take a hit of just $458k in those seasons. We would then take $2.5M a year for each of the following 6 seasons (with a one-off $2.9M hit in 26/27). 8 years of cap hits is a lot, but given our current cap structure, the organization's desire to not do a multi-year tank, and the likelihood of the cap increasing a substantial amount by year 5, I'd argue that $2.5M a year for an extra 4 years would hurt the team less than the immediate help of freeing up $6M a year for each of the next 2 years.

Trading him without retention should be plan A. Trading him with retention should be plan B. But I think that a buyout this summer is a viable plan C. It's easy to say that when it isn't $20M of my money, but an immediate savings of $6M a year in what could be this ownership groups most difficult fiscal years would be a big deal.

I agree. If ever there was a contract this ownership and GM were to decide to buy-out, this sure seems like it. To your further point, even if we retain up to a third of his cap hit if/when we trade him, the dead cap impact will still be less in each of the next four years as the impact would be in years 5-8 of a buyout. A trade with retention would hurt next year from a competitive standpoint for sure, certainly more than the first two years of a buyout, but we're not really expecting to be good next season anyway and we'll have a pretty good idea in 5 weeks or so who we are likely to be able to draft. If it isn't one of the Top 3-4 players it isn't likely to be someone who will impact the NHL roster in 23-24.

 

[kimzey59]

I agree. If ever there was a contract this ownership and GM were to decide to buy-out, this sure seems like it. To your further point, even if we retain up to a third of his cap hit if/when we trade him, the dead cap impact will still be less in each of the next four years as the impact would be in years 5-8 of a buyout. A trade with retention would hurt next year from a competitive standpoint for sure, certainly more than the first two years of a buyout, but we're not really expecting to be good next season anyway and we'll have a pretty good idea in 5 weeks or so who we are likely to be able to draft. If it isn't one of the Top 3-4 players it isn't likely to be someone who will impact the NHL roster in 23-24.

I don't care who we draft, I don't want them in the NHL next year.
Plugging guys right into the lineup after their drafted never seems to work out well.
Give them a year to build up their bodies, and then bring them in(slowly).