2023-2024 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread

[Linkens Mastery]

I get Amazon Prime for the free shipping. So that works for me. Curious to see if it is still regional on Prime. Most likely will be and I'll have to stick with ESPN plus. I'm also fine with that

I'm really hoping there is no Blackouts but having both Cards and Blues on Amazon Prime is nice.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Since we always bring up ex-Blues as guys who can come back to the organization for various jobs, and "well if we get rid of Armstrong, who are you going to replace him with" gets lobbed out as a reason we can't get rid of Armstrong - because, if there's no one immediately in mind, then Armstrong is clearly irreplaceable - I realized this morning that yes, there really is someone we can bring in who can replace Armstrong and do a really fine job, and he checks the "ex-Blue" box. And, he seems to be doing a really good job somewhere else.

Brendan Shanahan.

[dives into the bomb bunker]

 

[Linkens Mastery]

Since we always bring up ex-Blues as guys who can come back to the organization for various jobs, and "well if we get rid of Armstrong, who are you going to replace him with" gets lobbed out as a reason we can't get rid of Armstrong - because, if there's no one immediately in mind, then Armstrong is clearly irreplaceable - I realized this morning that yes, there really is someone we can bring in who can replace Armstrong and do a really fine job, and he checks the "ex-Blue" box. And, he seems to be doing a really good job somewhere else.

Brendan Shanahan.

[dives into the bomb bunker]

I don't see why he would leave his current job to be the GM of the Blues. Seems like a demotion.

 

[STL fan in MN]

Amazon agreement saves bankrupt RSN provider

Amazon will partner with Diamond Sports as part of a restructuring agreement as the largest owner of regional sports networks looks to emerge from bankruptcy.

www.espn.com

Blues games on Amazon seems very likely

Yay? I guess?

Says the networks will also still be available via cable and satellite. Being in Minnesota, my question is, will they remain on Hulu/ESPN+?

Also found this line staggering:

The company said in a late 2021 financial filing that it had debt of $8.67 billion.

That’s a big number in the red!

 

[bleedblue1223]

Being in KC and not wanting a streaming service with Bally, Amazon Prime would be best case scenario.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I don't see why he would leave his current job to be the GM of the Blues. Seems like a demotion.

The way the Leafs are going it might be a promotion up from "unemployed."

For the record: no, I don't want him as GM of the team. Or team president, which is what his ego would demand.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Since we always bring up ex-Blues as guys who can come back to the organization for various jobs, and "well if we get rid of Armstrong, who are you going to replace him with" gets lobbed out as a reason we can't get rid of Armstrong - because, if there's no one immediately in mind, then Armstrong is clearly irreplaceable - I realized this morning that yes, there really is someone we can bring in who can replace Armstrong and do a really fine job, and he checks the "ex-Blue" box. And, he seems to be doing a really good job somewhere else.

Brendan Shanahan.

[dives into the bomb bunker]

i've long envisioned steen as the guy if we wanted to go that route. his timeline and army's timeline to step back could well coincide. now, that assumes ownership is comfortable with status of rebuild. if they were to make change in next year or so, which i think highly unlikely, then would likely go outside for someone.

 

[Bobby Orrtuzzo]

 

[Linkens Mastery]

Kappy out 4 weeks.

 

[Majorityof1]

i've long envisioned steen as the guy if we wanted to go that route. his timeline and army's timeline to step back could well coincide. now, that assumes ownership is comfortable with status of rebuild. if they were to make change in next year or so, which i think highly unlikely, then would likely go outside for someone.

There should be roughly 10,000 criteria we look at in a GM before we look at connections to the Blues when hiring a GM. Get the most qualified. Steen has zero experience. A qualified canidate will develop a connection to the Blues when they are successful as the Blues Gm.

Good for Gaudette. He has been great in Springfield. Glad he gets his cup of coffee. .

 

[Brian39]

Yay? I guess?

Says the networks will also still be available via cable and satellite. Being in Minnesota, my question is, will they remain on Hulu/ESPN+?

Also found this line staggering:

That’s a big number in the red!

Yes, this does not impact ESPN's ownership of out-of-market broadcast rights. Bally/Diamond owns in-market broadcast rights, so this deal would only give Amazon the rights to stream the games in-market. ESPN paid a lot of money for their deal with the NHL and it specifically included replacing NHL.TV with ESPN+ as the home for out of market NHL games. They are absolutely not going to give those rights up to a competitor.

Out of market fans should be unaffected.

For in-market fans, this should be a large improvement over the current Bally Sports app. The NFL games streamed on Prime Video have been high quality. As much as I don't like the layout of Prime Video for browsing, the actual playback functionality is fantastic. Should be a massive step up from the garbage Bally Sports app.

Now, lets just hope that games are included with Prime and it isn't an added subscription. I'm not holding my breath on that.

 

[BrokenFace]

There should be roughly 10,000 criteria we look at in a GM before we look at connections to the Blues when hiring a GM. Get the most qualified. Steen has zero experience. A qualified canidate will develop a connection to the Blues when they are successful as the Blues Gm.



Good for Gaudette. He has been great in Springfield. Glad he gets his cup of coffee. .

Couldn't agree more. If "ex-Blue" is even close to the top of the list of qualities a GM candidate has, then he's not the right option.

 

[bleedblue1223]

It will 100% be an added subscription, I just hope it isn't some 20+/month bullshit.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

There should be roughly 10,000 criteria we look at in a GM before we look at connections to the Blues when hiring a GM. Get the most qualified. Steen has zero experience. A qualified canidate will develop a connection to the Blues when they are successful as the Blues Gm.

of course. I don't mean to suggest that a good gm has to have ties to franchise. but if you are scouting what you want in a gm, i've long felt that steen had so many of those key traits other than experience. i am in no way suggesting that he should be gm in waiting. i'm just saying that i'm thrilled we brought him back into organization, i'm excited for him to grow in management role, and i think that down the road he COULD be a great gm.

it's like saying that i think lindstein can be top pair defender. he isn't even nhl ready, might never be. but he has lots of traits that you want in that type of defender and with proper care and feeding i think he could be there. i'd still draft guy like dickinson if we can- or deal for hanifan if reasonable cost or even guy like heiskanen if he miraculously became available.

so i ain't putting all my eggs in that basket, either with lindstein or steen. but successful organizations need to be able to grow and develop talent to sustain themselves, and that is both on and off ice. and steen is guy that i think is great gm prospect, even though there are many, many, steps ahead of him before we would realistically consider him for that type of role.

 

[PJJJP]

Looks like Bannister is putting Kessel back with Krug and Faulk with Perunovich. Also Neighbors moved up with Thomas and buch and Schenn playing with Kyrou and Hayes

 

[Xerloris]

Why don't you guys use a VPN to avoid blackouts?

 

[bleedblue1223]

Gaudette is also up and expected to play on 3rd line.

 

[Mike Liut]

These next 2 games vs the Caps will be pretty telling on our direction. They are in the same tier as we are. We’ve been getting outplayed against better teams for a while now, so it will be pretty telling how we play against another mid tier team.

 

[BadgersandBlues]

I like the idea of a Schenn/Hayes/Kyrou line - there are two players on that line that can keep the puck away from Schenn and he can go into the corners and in front of the net instead of trying to turn him into the carrier/distributor which is clearly not working at all with his current puck skills.

I also like Neighbors on the top line. I think this might be our most balanced top 6 approach we've had all year.

I'm a bit bummed that Kap is out on IR, I've been wondering if a line of Saad/Sunny/Kap would be a good forechecking/defensive assignment 3rd line - maybe with a pop of offense, maybe not. Our 4th line is in shambles though, but oh well, play them all of 6 minutes for all I care, Toro/Alexandrov/Mac/Walker/Blais are just warm bodies at this point.

 

[STL fan in MN]

Yes, this does not impact ESPN's ownership of out-of-market broadcast rights. Bally/Diamond owns in-market broadcast rights, so this deal would only give Amazon the rights to stream the games in-market. ESPN paid a lot of money for their deal with the NHL and it specifically included replacing NHL.TV with ESPN+ as the home for out of market NHL games. They are absolutely not going to give those rights up to a competitor.

Out of market fans should be unaffected.

For in-market fans, this should be a large improvement over the current Bally Sports app. The NFL games streamed on Prime Video have been high quality. As much as I don't like the layout of Prime Video for browsing, the actual playback functionality is fantastic. Should be a massive step up from the garbage Bally Sports app.

Now, lets just hope that games are included with Prime and it isn't an added subscription. I'm not holding my breath on that.

Thanks for that.

And unfortunately, completely agree with bleedblue that there almost certainly will be an additional cost.

 

[Spektre]

Ready to see Gaudette, he's earned this call up.

Finally getting Schenn off center... he should 100% be a winger the rest of his career

 

[Frenzy31]

Looks like Bannister is putting Kessel back with Krug and Faulk with Perunovich. Also Neighbors moved up with Thomas and buch and Schenn playing with Kyrou and Hayes

The Kyrou, Schenn and Hayes line was pretty solid when they were together earlier this year.

 

[BadgersandBlues]

With all the talk regarding keeping/trading Buch, it's getting me thinking about what we think is a realistic timeline to start competing again for a Cup. We're in a really weird place - we have 1-3 great pieces up front on our current roster (Buch/Thomas/Kyrou), 1 really solid piece on our back end (Parayko) and a goalie that we can win a Cup with if we have enough talent around him.

The issue I keep coming back to when it comes to Buch - It's hard to see how the door opens at all for the better next season. Our defensive core is locked in and clearly isn't good enough. No one on our back end is at an age where we can expect improvement. So let's just assume that we suck again next year too. After next season, we get a lot more flexibility on the trade front of Krug/Faulk/Schenn/Leddy - which would also be the first season of a Buch extension, where he will be 30, with Parayko and Binner at 32. Are we really going to trade 3/4's of our top 4 D in one off-season? Probably not. Even 2 would be tough. Who are we replacing them with? We do have a bunch of D prospects, but outside Lindstein, really no one jumps off the page as a top 4 guy.

Before I get into the forward prospects, I'd like to point out that it took Thomas until his D+5 season to really break out offensively and become a top line player for us - and that was with him in the NHL by his D+2 season.

By 25-26, Bolduc and Dean will be in their D+5 seasons. Neither has given any indication they are ready for even a cup of coffee in the NHL at this point, so that's two prospects we're hoping to see massive growth from to even be ready to take a regular NHL shift by 25-26. Snuggy will be in his D+4 season, and I have the hope that he will have at least one full season under his belt by that point. Dvo/Stenberg/Lindstein will all be in their D+3 seasons - perhaps one of them will have played a full season in the NHL, perhaps not - but this kinda gets to my point - we have all these prospects, and they all look like they have the opportunity to play in the NHL and do well in the NHL - but expecting them to become a Robert Thomas-esque contributor this early in their development seems a fool's errand.

So basically, by the start of 25-26 we're going to have a 32 year old Parayko and a 32 year old Binner. I'm worried less about Binner as Hofer has looked like a real potential replacement - but (and I feel like I've been a broken record about this for the last 2+ years) wtf are we going to do about this defense?

I'm not trying to be a doomer, but expecting us to compete for a top 3 in our division as well as a Cup as early as 25-26 just doesn't seem feasible with the current timeline on this crop of prospects - maybe 2-3 years after that, sure, but by then Buch will be 32-33 and clearly on the decline. I guess this is my roundabout way of saying I do think we should trade him, while also trying to stimulate conversation on how we could potentially improve quicker then the timeline I laid out above to change my mind and keep him.

 

[Brian39]

Before I get into the forward prospects, I'd like to point out that it took Thomas until his D+5 season to really break out offensively and become a top line player for us - and that was with him in the NHL by his D+2 season.

I think it is worth noting that Thomas contributed further down the lineup well before his D+5 season. He genuinely contributed as a 3rd line winger for a Cup winner in his D+2 rookie season. He followed that up with 42 points in 66 games in his D+3 season, which made him our 5th highest-scoring forward on a team that was leading the West when the season stopped. That was a 52 point pace with pretty limited PP time. His D+4 season was an injury-riddled disaster in the COVID season and then he exploded in his D+5.

I think the goal in 2025/26 is to assume/plan/hope that Snuggy is a 2nd line guy, Neighbours is a good versatile middle sixer, and one or two of our other current prospects are capable of middle 6 contribution (likely with a lean toward 3rd line). If you get that type of contribution at the price they would be making, that leaves you with a lot of flexibility to overpay (in terms of cap) a couple quality vets to round out the middle 6 group. Especially since we will be paying less than $25M for our existing trio of top line caliber forwards (assuming a Buch extension for the purposes of this conversation). Paying around $30M for 6-7 players in your traditionally highest paid 9 forward spots leaves a lot of space in a league with a $92M cap.

The forward group very, very likely won't be contender-quality by 2025/26 simply by extending Buch and then waiting for prospects to actualize, but I don't see any reason to expect Army to do that. Army has consistently acquired outside help to bolster what we have in the organization and he has done it in basically every possible way. Buch was a trade of a medium futures asset and a role player for a skilled player. Schenn/ROR were pure 'here's a high value futures package' deals. Saad/Perron/Bozak/Hoffman were signings. Hayes/Kap/Vrana were waivers and bargain shopping. Army has a long track record of bringing in help to support teams of all varieties of talent, so I would be shocked if we get to 2025/26 without bringing in a forward or two.

None of this is to say that a window will for sure open by 2025/26, but I don't at all think we should write off 2025/26 just because the prospects shouldn't be expected to be where Thomas was at in his D+5 season.

 

[Mike Liut]

I’m depressed now