St. Louis Blues have some big decisions to make during 2024 NHL offseason

While the St. Louis Blues may be hanging on for dear life in the playoff race, it’s still very clear that this group is a far cry from the team that won a Stanley Cup five years ago. Even if they make the playoffs, they’ll likely just be an easy out for whichever of the elite teams in the West takes the top seed in the conference.

So if the Blues aren’t quite at the level of Cup contender that they need to be, what changes should be made? Obviously Pavel Buchnevich was being shopped at the trade deadline, but changes also need to be made on their blueline, which hasn’t performed well in recent seasons. The problem is that the four defensemen they’d want to look to move in Colton Parayko, Torey Krug, Justin Faulk and Nick Leddy are all signed for at least two more seasons after this one, and they all have no-trade clauses.

So, which of these defensemen might be on the move this offseason. Frank Seravalli discusses the options that the Blues have this offseason to move one of their blueliners on Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: Well we know he tried to move Torey Krug last year, so it’s Krug, Colton Parayko, Nick Leddy and Justin Faulk. It’s going to be tough. I think there’s certainly some diminishing returns on Faulk. A lot of teams view the undersized defenseman in Krug differently when it comes to the playoffs. Colton Parayko had a tremendous year, and the thing that I look at with Parayko’s season is that that’s the one guy I don’t want to move, but he might have the most value.

So, how do you find a way to change up that look? That’s going to be a big question, whether it’s up front or on the back end. There have been some nice progressions this year up front, like I love the season that Jake Neighbors has had. But I think they need to mix it up a little bit.

And by the way, they got a great year of goaltending from Jordan Binnington.

You can watch the full episode here…