If the St. Louis Blues want to be aggressive, they could send the trade market into a frenzy
Marco D’Amico of RG Media: The St. Louis Blues have a young forward corps, an aging Blues roster, and are in the middle of a shakeup and rebuild. They’ve tweaked their core while trying to stay relevant, but if they want to be aggressive, they could turn sellers and shake up the trade market.
“If they continue this way, Brayden Schenn could be drafted and a lot of teams would be interested, but I’m wondering about Jordan Kyrou, Colton Pareko and Robert Thomas,” the source speculated. “Do they want to restructure or potentially rebuild? If the Blues are still the bottom team in the standings, it’s going to create some noise, maybe not immediately, but closer to the trade deadline.”
NHL News: Colorado Avalanche extend Martin Necas
More teams retaining their players rather than letting them become free agents
Mike Zeisberger of NHL.com: Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell said more teams will hold on to their pending free agents, especially with fewer prospects hitting the open market on July 1.
“As far as the lack of player movement in the league, if you go back and look at the trades this summer, I haven’t counted them yet, but it’s by far the fewest we’ve had in probably 15 years,” Waddell said. “A lot of that has to do with not having a lot of high-end free agents on the market, certainly because of the salary cap going up and people are looking for a way to keep their players.
“If you look back over the last five or six years, there’s been three or four teams every summer that have had to make a move to get under the salary cap in the summer. But after free agency started this summer, there wasn’t anybody in cap jail that had to make a move. So I think going forward, free agency is not going to be what it used to be.”
NHL Rumors: Boston Bruins don’t have to trade Pavel Zacha
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