ST. LOUIS – It’s no secret of the noise surrounding the St. Louis Blues at the NHL Trade Deadline in March.
Key players were traded, including captain Brayden Schenn (New York Islanders) and Justin Faulk (Detroit Red Wings); key players stayed.
Whether all of the names that were mentioned as players that could be jettisoned out of town were true or not, we’ll truly never know, including Robert Thomas, is something for everyone to decide for themselves whether they were fact or not.
But with Thomas exploding after the Olympic break – to the tune of 31 points (14 goals, 17 assists) in 22 games and a plus-25 – for the second year in a row, it begs the question of why in the world would Thomas even be up for grabs in the first place?
“Some of these trade talks are … I think they’re a little bit of fabrication too,” Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said Saturday after exit meetings at Enterprise Center. “They start out and all of the sudden they get legs and then they go and they go and they go and they go and they never stop. But when the manager says anybody’s tradeable, OK, anybody’s tradeable. The cost of acquiring someone of Robert Thomas’ talent is extremely high. I don’t think anyone values Robert Thomas more in the NHL than Doug Armstrong values Robert Thomas in the NHL. If he was available, there’s a reason he’s here and I value him higher than anyone else.”
Maybe Thomas’ name was brought up by the Blues, maybe it wasn’t, but teams would be crazy not to call the Blues to see if A) he was available, and B) see what it would take to acquire such a talent. This is a bonafide No. 1 center in the league, and those don’t grow on trees.
Nevertheless, his name was out there, and maybe some feelings were hurt in this process, which is why Thomas offered the following when he spoke on Saturday.
“Obviously you’ve got to go through a process with your family,” he said. “Like I was saying before, there’s a lot of conversations that need to happen this summer. Those haven’t happened yet and I can’t really speak too much on it. I guess we’ll kind of see where it goes from there.“
Well, who do those conversations involve? Well, Armstrong for sure, despite him relinquishing his role as GM on July 1 in favor of Alexander Steen. Those two will need to offer some assurances of the direction of the organization, for one, and maybe let the player know that they were just listening to any potential offers for his services and not looking to move him, despite Thomas’ full no-trade clause.
The same goes for defenseman Colton Parayko, who was reportedly signing off on his no-trade clause away from being dealt to the Buffalo Sabres, only for him to nix it.
“They’re both excellent NHL hockey players. They’re foundational players,” Armstrong said. “They’ve been foundational players for this franchise for a long time. It’s something that I’m going to sit with Alex and we have to talk to ownership about the one- and three-year plan and where does everybody fit in on that. But they’re great players. We just have to cement the direction where we’re going to go.”
For Thomas, there’s no question that the belief is he wasn’t going anywhere before, and shouldn’t be going nowhere now. There’s four years remaining on a contract that pays an average annual value of $8.125 million, and judging by the way Thomas, Dylan Holloway and Jimmy Snuggerud played down the stretch, the Blues have found their No. 1 line for many years to come, if – and that’s a big if – they can produce at a reasonable pace. The pace and production they played at in the final quarter of the season was off the charts good.
“I think we’ve had some good success in the last 20-30 games,” Thomas said. “I think just continuing to build on that, like you said, getting together. I found us just being able to communicate and skate together, and do different things like that has really transpired into during-season success. That’s definitely something we’re going to look to do and plan and kind of see how that goes. Obviously there’s a good stretch of games that you can really build on to hopefully be a long-term thing.”
To his own fault to a degree, Thomas tried playing through a leg injury early in the season that obviously affected his play and limited him to 33 points in 44 games, and likely kept him out of consideration for Team Canada at the Winter Olympics, far off the point-plus per game clip he was coming off last season. But once he got the procedure done, it was not even a question of what kind of player he was and could be after it. It was a reminder of the player that had a point (45 points; nine goals, 36 assists) in 30 of the final 33 games last season and should give the 26-year-old a leg up on summer training with a clean bill of health.
“I feel like health was a huge factor,” Thomas said. “I don’t have to get into too much of it, but it was really nice to feel healthy, feel like myself again. I think that was a big thing of just getting back to the level that I’ve been playing at the last couple of years.
“… I don’t think it’s going to change too much my summer training. Being able to have a full summer healthy, train, keep on playing some more hockey going to Worlds and stuff. I’m really excited for this summer. I don’t think the injury really changed much.”
So what would those discussions be like for the GM, and what would he need to hear from the players, when and if they occur?
“I don’t really need to know a lot from them. Alex is the manager,” Armstrong said. “There’s a heirarchy.
“Now, what the reality of not just the St. Louis Blues is, they have no-trades. It’s a 50-50 relationship. It’s not 100-0 or 0-100, meaning they can say, ‘I don’t like the direction of the team. Trade me,’ and we’ll say, ‘No, we’re not going to trade you. We’re not getting what we like. So your job is to come and work.’ Or we could say, ‘We’re going to trade you,’ and they could say, ‘How about no, I’m going to stay.’ It’s a 50-50 relationship right now. We’d love to work together with them, we’d love that they can achieve their goals and we can achieve our goals whether it’s together or apart, but neither side owns the ultimate hammer in that. I don’t want to just say this is a Parayko-Thomas thing, this is anybody that’s got a no-trade clause in the league, has the same relationship with their manager and it is 50-50.”
There’s no denying the presence and affect Thomas had on two young Blues skill guys in Holloway and Snuggerud, something that will be heavily weighed by management this summer.