UMSLBlues12 wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 10:56 am
bradleygt89 wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 10:34 am
When does Thomas become due for his next RFA contract? I like Thomas but part of me wonders whose better long term?
Schenn 7x7
Or
Thomas 5-6x7 on his next dealas it seems many top end players are getting paid in their second contract.
I may be in the vast minority here, but Thomas's injury history and size concerns me as a number 2c. Unless DA can do a bridge deal with Thomas?
He has two years left on his entry level deal. Ideally, we keep both. If you do sign Schenn, then it probably means no Maroon (unless Maroon is cool with a one year deal again) and finding someone to take on Bozak.
Also keep in mind Petro is going to get re-signed. I know we had lots of talk about trading him and such, but after this SC run there is no way they don't re-sign him. Petro has a $7M cap hit right now. We all know JBo is done after this year, his cap hit is $3.25M. Petro will get a lot of that...Karlsson just got $11M, lets say Petro gets $9.5M. Some salary is going to have to get moved out (Bozak) and some young players are going to have to produce on entry level deals (Reinke, Kyrou, etc) if we want to re-sign Schenn.
It's going to be such a tricky offseason. If you keep and extend Schenn, you have to figure out who's playing wing the next 2 years since Bozak is probably locking down that 3C role. Also, not only are you going to have to account for the eventual raises to the young forwards (Blais, Sundqvist, Sanford, Kyrou, Barbashev etc), you're going to have to have spots for them to play. Most of those guys aren't due for huge raises, but they'll get something and with the cap not predicted to go up as much as they originally thought, every little bit helps. Somebody is going to have to go. Schenn still makes a lot of logical sense to move on, but Armstrong is surely aware there's no chance in hell they win the Cup this year without him.
On the defensive end, there's a similar glut of NHL caliber guys, with only Gunnarsson seeming to be on his way out. Reinke, Mikkola and Perunovich probably factor in over the next year or two as well. The curse of having great depth is that you can't keep the band together for too long. It will be fascinating to see who has a chair in St. Louis when the music stops.