2024 Draft Recap: St. Louis Blues
2024 Draft Recap: St. Louis Blues
Another busy weekend for the Blues as they strengthened two strengths by loading up on defensemen and centers.
NASHVILLE (The Draft Analyst) — Those familiar with my work know how I feel about draft report cards, even if I’ve been guilty of feeding that beast throughout the last 10 years. But my thoughts on the latest 2024 results will be more than broad brush strokes, as pinning the rose on 12 uninterrupted months of in-depth analysis from both the team and prospect standpoints requires more than the standard letter-grade marking scheme acting as the rubric. Rather, draft hauls will be evaluated and labeled on the following criteria, which I think are both fair and reasonable:
Strong — Any four of potential franchise player(s) drafted; needs addressed; first-round caliber picks in the second or third round; multiple home-run swings in later rounds; point-producing sleepers; the majority of prospects were in top-line/top-pairing/starter roles (Ex. Buffalo’s 2022 draft)
Above-average - Any three of needs addressed; multiple home-run swings; acknowledged consensus favorites; the majority of prospects were in top-line/top-pairing/starter roles; making more with less; first-round quality in the second or third round. (Ex. Carolina’s 2023 draft)
Average — A solid first- or second-round pick but mostly unspectacular thereafter (Ex. Colorado’s 2020 draft)
Below-average — Quantity over quality; over-drafting of higher-round picks/reaching; four picks or less with no first-round selection; obsession with overagers (Ex. New York Rangers’ 2018 draft or Ottawa’s drafts from 2021-2023)
Poor — Any three of unpopular reach in the first round, no picks in the first or second round; needs not addressed, obsession with overagers, leaving upside on the board for projects, or bucking popular consensus choices (Ex. Arizona’s 2020 draft)
Outlook
So what was it exactly that was so vexing about the 2023-24 St. Louis Blues, who missed the playoffs for a second consecutive season despite posting a respectable 43 wins and improved from 81 points to 92? How does possessing five 25-plus goal scorers yet still finishing 24th in scoring sound? Or that the Blues went a sparkling 26-13-1 against non-playoff teams, but not without being swept by both the bottom-feeding Columbus Blue Jackets and Chicago Blackhawks.
And then there was the Nashville thing. You know, that Nashville thing, but not the hot chicken thing or the drunks-on-an-afternoon-peddle-boat-street-cruise kinda thing. No, we’re talking about the division-rival Nashville Predators, AKA The Wild-Card-Clinching Nashville Predators, who took all three meetings against St. Louis by an embarrassing 19-8 aggregate against the same Blues’ goalies who at season’s end combined for the league’s sixth-best save percentage. When the dust settled on the regular season, St. Louis was saddled with losing records against both the Central Division (11-13-2) and 2024 playoffs teams (17-20-5).
Puzzling, indeed. But mounting a season-long challenge to the softer targets in the Western Conference’s playoff race rather than waiting until mid-December to get their act together best explains the Blues’ failure in 2024, which to be fair wasn’t nearly as chaotic and frustrating as the season prior. Still, head coach Craig Berube was fired after 28 games and his replacement Drew Bannister righting the ship to a 30-19-5 mark couldn’t prevent St. Louis from missing consecutive postseasons for the first time in 13 years.
General manager Doug Armstrong has been the one constant in the organization since assuming command in July 2010. He is rightfully credited with keeping the Blues in the upper echelon almost entirely throughout his time in upper management and even built the franchise’s 2019 Stanley Cup championship mostly through the draft. Although some feel that title from five seasons ago is the only thing keeping Armstrong employed in St. Louis, it’s important to remember his Blues are only two years removed from a 109-point campaign and that it’s reasonable to assume the coaching change was the elixir that was needed to reverse what seemed to be a near-catastrophic collapse never seen in St. Louis since the late 2000s. After the season, Armstrong announced his plan to become the team’s president (through 2028-29) and hand over GM duties to former Blues veteran Alexander Steen, who’ll serve as Armstrong’s understudy until taking over in 2026-27..
Of course, whether it’s Armstrong or Steen running the show shouldn’t lessen the importance of bridging any gap from mediocrity to contention through the proliferation of draft assets, which to Armstrong’s credit now appears to be a strategic objective amid a modest downturn that he rightfully refuses to label a rebuild. But the current predicament with the parent club is almost entirely on Armstrong himself, as the long-term deals he is currently managing include eight contracts that cost $6 million or more against the salary cap, with six of them anchored to no-trade or no-move restrictions and have at least three years remaining until expiry. So neither end of the strategic spectrum -- going “all in” for the Stanley Cup within a short timeframe or quickly deconstructing an expensive roster to kickstart a rebuild – are options Armstrong can realistically entertain, let alone execute.
But even with the heat turned on, the Blues’ GM steadily replenished assets on the prospect front while still spending up to the cap as he did when the Blues were elite, and his securement of seven first-round picks since 2020 coupled with recent offer-sheet signings of defenseman Philip Broberg and center Dylan Holloway from the Edmonton Oilers (without surrendering a first-round pick, by the way) each serve as examples of sound long-range planning, at least on paper.
As such, the Blues entered the 2024 draft possessing one of the league’s deepest farm systems, one replete with blue-chip assets at every position. Of their 31 picks between 2019 and 2023, 15 were drafted within the first three rounds with a positional spread of six centers, four wingers, four defensemen, and one goalie. Much of the same should have been expected in 2024, as Armstrong owned the 16th pick in the first round plus two selections apiece in the second and third, with those early-round bonus picks coming via the 2023 trade deadline selloffs of veteran forwards Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko, respectively. In total, the Blues entered the weekend with at least nine picks for a second straight draft, something they hadn’t accomplished since 2007 and 2008 – St. Louis drafts that produced five noteworthy NHL’ers who remain active to this day.
But a deeper look into specifics of the St. Louis pipeline revealed a stark disparity between right-shot defensemen versus the left by nearly a three-to-one ratio, thereby putting Armstrong and his scouts in the position to do something they rarely ever did under his watch, which is draft for positional need in early rounds.
MORE: 2024 NHL Draft Report (PDF Download)
Traded picks
The Blues’ perspective heading into the 2024 draft should have been as plain as day – they were a cap-strapped mediocre team neither contending nor rebuilding and owned a better-than-average pipeline with an obvious need for right-shot defenders. They also knew that picking 16th overall almost guaranteed that all the elite defensemen would be off the board, leaving Armstrong with the viable option of moving up either using his established prospect capital, from the extra picks he had in rounds two, three, and seven, or a combination of both.
The latter, i.e., trading a prospect and picks for the sole intention of moving up to draft a specific player without involving a veteran or salary dump, is a video-game scenario we rarely see in the top half of the first round. In fact, I dug a little deeper and discovered the infamous Florida-Pittsburgh swap for first overall in 2003 (which allowed the Penguins to draft goalie Marc-Andre Fleury with the top pick) representing the last time picks and a prospect (in this case, Mikael Samuelsson and a late second-rounder) were packaged together within the top 15 selections to move up on draft day.
Nonetheless, Armstrong made two deals over his weekend in Las Vegas; one for each day and both involving a veteran forward. The opening move was a seemingly minor trade that brought middle-six French winger Alexandre Texier to St. Louis for a 2025 fourth-round selection. Texier, who turned 25 two weeks ago, carries a modest cap hit of $2.1 million after playing in his first full NHL season since being drafted 45th overall in 1999. The next and final Armstrong trade during the draft was far more prominent, as he managed to shed Kevin Hayes’ $3.6 million cap hit for future considerations after what truly was a failed one-year experiment. The Penguins and Blues don’t make trades with one another as often as they used to, but Armstrong was fortunate to kick a cooking grenade that rolled into his foxhole, even if forking over his 2025 second-round pick was the only way to get rid of it.
Pity that same second-round pick if you can, as the poor thing probably didn’t realize it was merely at the start point of a whirlwind tour of the NHL Trade-o-Sphere. After becoming the property of the Penguins, the pick was then shipped back to the Blues (along with Pittsburgh’s sixth-rounder in 2026) on Aug. 13 for St. Louis’ own second-rounder in 2026 and the 2025 third-rounder the Blues previously acquired from the Ottawa Senators in the July 2 trade of winger Mathieu Joseph. If you took a breath to tally the Blues’ projected 2025 haul up to that point, it would have read 1-2-3-5-6, with the fourth going to Columbus from the aforementioned Texier deal and the seventh to the Detroit Red Wings (along with career minor-league center Dylan McLaughlin) from a 2023 trade for winger Jakub Vrana (who is now on a tryout with the Washington Capitals).
But things got even weirder not long after when Armstrong offer-sheeted Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway from the Edmonton Oilers, losing our road-weary second-round pick as compensation for Broberg and the 2025 third-rounder for Holloway. So as of today, the playoff-less Blues own only three picks — 1-5-6 — in what is supposed to be a deep 2025 draft.
Additional Notes
-We can now turn the page on the Ryan O’Reilly blockbuster with the Toronto Maple Leafs after the Blues selected physical defender Lukas Fischer with the second-rounder (56th overall) that originally belonged to Toronto. The final call now reads O’Reilly and energy winger Noel Acciari for minor-league center Adam Gaudette, center prospect Mikhail Abramov, Toronto’s 2023 first-round pick that was used to draft center Otto Stenberg at 25th overall, Ottawa’s 2023 third-round pick (from the Matt Murray trade) that became skilled winger Juraj Pekarcik at 76th overall, and Fischer.
-The same finality applies to the Vladimir Tarasenko deal with the New York Rangers, whose 2024 third-round pick (95th overall) was used by St. Louis to draft big Czech center Adam Jecho. That roll-up is now an expiring Tarasenko and defenseman Nikko Mikkola to the Rangers in exchange for veteran winger Sammy Blais, depth-level defense prospect Hunter Skinner, a 2023 first-round pick (that New York acquired from Dallas for Nils Lundkvist) used to draft defenseman Theo Lindstein at 29th overall, and Jecho.
-The Calgary Flames selected overage defenseman Eric Jamieson with St. Louis’ 2024 sixth-round pick that the Blues sent to the Philadelphia Flyers for center Kevin Hayes. The Flames acquired the pick and a 2024 fifth-rounder from Philadelphia so the Flyers could draft center Heikki Ruohonen in the fourth round.
-The Blues drafted rugged Russian center Matvei Korotky with the 2024 seventh-round pick (211th overall) they acquired from the New York Islanders last December for veteran defenseman Robert Bortuzzo.
MORE: 2023-24 NHL Farm System Rankings and Assessments (Pre-Draft)
Draft picks
Assessment: Strong
The typical draft-day performance of chief scout Tony Feltrin and staff can best be described as quietly impressive, as Blues scouts have a reputation for unearthing at least one quality NHL’er per class with stunning consistency. Although the pipeline’s need for right-shot defensemen would be hard for the Blues to overlook, a seemingly uninterrupted best-player-available approach has been a hallmark of every Blues draft since I began covering them in 2015, and a simple internet search shows it goes back even farther than that.
Rarely will I make a grade exception for a draft pick I wasn’t thrilled about simply after hearing the reasoning from the scouting director or general manager. But both Feltrin and Armstrong made valid cases for choosing injured Czech defense prospect Adam Jiricek at 16th overall despite missing a chunk of his draft season and subsequently being unavailable for any rookie camps or summer tournaments. Yes, Jiricek at 6-foot-3 can glide, cover, initiate, attack, and create. But all of these laudable traits were far less prevalent in his Extraliga play in the lead-up to his season-ending knee injury at the world juniors on Dec. 26, and the aforementioned issues combined for a justifiable double-whammy in his pre-draft assessment. Was it fair to label the seriously-injured Jiricek a problematic draft prospect? Without a doubt, especially in a year where multiple defensemen would be expected to rule the upper portion of the first round and near-tier options available thereafter.
Still, the Blues were operating from positions of both need and strength, sort of, if they were intent on assuming greater risk at the draft, even at 16th overall. They had four picks combined between the second and third rounds, and there is little reason to believe that at least three of their many left-shot defense prospects will become full-time NHL’ers within three years. On the forward front, the acquisition of center hopeful Zach Dean at the 2023 trade deadline and the subsequent drafting of Dalibor Dvorsky (10th overall in 2023) and Otto Stenberg (25th) gave the Blues five recent first-round picks in their pipeline who played center or wing, and that wouldn’t include graduated 27-goal-scorer Jake Neighbours, a winger who went 26th overall in 2020.
Was Jiricek the best player available at 16th overall? Certainly not by a significant margin, but the Blues needed a right-shot defender, and drafting another forward of any kind increased the likelihood that the new high-profile pick would be blocked and ultimately unsuccessful in his development. The same logic also applied to lefty defenders, as St. Louis had drafted nearly a dozen high-upside types with differing skill sets since 2020 and would likely be forced to keep any additional lefties stashed in Europe or the NCAA for at least four or five post-draft years before an AHL spot became available. Although long-term development paths have proven successful on a case-by-case basis, history says they work better for later-round picks than those taken on Day 1.
With both forwards and left-shot defensemen theoretically off the table, the obvious course of action for St. Louis was to plug the gap on the blueline’s right side, which meant the Blues would either hope to get incredibly lucky that one of righties Artyom Levshunov (2nd overall to Chicago), Carter Yakemchuk (7th to Ottawa), or Zayne Parekh (9th to Calgary) slipped to 16, or be forced to overdraft a righty from a robust second-tier group that included Jiricek, NTDP’er E.J. Emery (30th to the New York Rangers), CHL’ers Ben Danford (31st to Toronto), and Charlie Elick (36th to Columbus). They were left with the latter, and opportunities to trade up that never materialized made it even easier for St. Louis to let it fly and gamble on Jiricek, who will play in the OHL this season but at press time has yet to play in an organized game since his injury.
When asked why they agreed on Jiricek, Armstrong said the injury allowed for a deeper look into his past performances which only solidified their positive impression. Naturally, this implies a heavy dose of video scouting went into the selection, thereby linking more than just the scouting staff to the process. This all-hands-on-deck approach toward the draft is one that I’d normally consider overkill, but it tends to work better for the Blues than most others, so reputation definitely counts here. Feltrin expounded on the pick by adding the importance of size and Jiricek’s ability to play physically, but again, the admission that video scouting confirmed their live assessments while concurrently keeping Jiricek ranked ahead of his available peers, coupled with the much-needed addition of a blue-chip on the right side of the defense, should be enough to quell any raucous criticism. That being said, the forward prospects taken immediately after Jiricek – Terik Parascak, Sacha Boisvert, Trevor Connelly, and Cole Eiserman in particular – were simply better players in their draft season with higher upside to boot.
The Blues firmly established a defense-first theme by taking American-born blueliners with each of their second-round picks – lefty Colin Ralph at 48 and righty Lukas Fischer at 56, each of whom was a double-digit riser on NHL Central Scouting’s final rankings. The initial assessment of the left-handed-shooting Ralph as a draft prospect was that he deserved his high-round slot and that there was nothing entirely wrong with St. Louis looking to benefit from what everyone knew would be a strong defense class. In retrospect, the move to draft a well-regarded left-shot rearguard could be viewed as part of Armstrong’s plan to offer-sheet defenseman Philip Broberg and center Dylan Holloway soon after the draft in that the compensation he would be forced to give to the Edmonton Oilers would be draft picks and future considerations, with the latter becoming lefty defense prospect Paul Fischer, a Blues’ fifth-rounder in 2023 who had a promising freshman season with the University of Notre Dame.
Another benefit to drafting defensemen with each of their first three picks is that Jiricek, Ralph, and Fischer offer you something different. In theory, the puck rushing and generating of offense by Jiricek would be complimented by a steadying partner like Ralph, who plays a disciplined and disruptive shutdown game while generally staying within himself. As for a potential Ralph-Fischer combination, the tandem certainly would be more physical, with the hard-shooting Fischer – the son of former NHL defender Jiri Fischer --confidently developing his offensive game in addition to providing an intimidating presence. But playing around with future defense pairings can go on for days if you’re going to involve Blues prospects, which may have been Armstrong’s point from the beginning. No one can argue against St. Louis having a deadly farm system, especially in terms of defensemen.
It wasn’t until the third round that the Blues began to grab forwards, which were represented in five of their final six picks. The first one off the board at 81st overall was talented Czech left winger and personal favorite Ondrej Kos, who is a bit of a unicorn for being a big body (6-foot-3) but is as slippery and creative as a smaller playmaking center. Joining him soon thereafter at 95th overall was an actual center in massive Czech pivot Adam Jecho, a skilled puck handler and deceptive shooter who was a Central Scouting darling at 22nd overall on their final North American list but didn’t produce enough to warrant such high praise. Nonetheless, the drafting of Jiricek, Kos, and Jecho within the first four rounds one year after taking Slovakia’s Dalibor Dvorsky (10th overall) and Juraj Pekarcik (76th), followed by the Czech Republic’s Jakub Stancl (106th), shows the Blues are bullish on not only drafting Central Europeans but grabbing them in the higher rounds as well.
Each of St. Louis’ final four forward picks were impressive in their respective draft seasons and offered way more to get excited about than not. Center Tomas Mrsic (113th overall) is a speed merchant with decent size (6-foot, 170) and dual-threat abilities who still produced nearly a point per game on a loaded Medicine Hat squad that kept him stapled to the third line for most of his draft season. Mrsic was moved to the Prince Albert Raiders over the summer for Minnesota Wild 2024 second-rounder Ryder Ritchie, so the expectation is that Mrsic should be on the top line and first power-play unit with the Raiders this season.
If you needed further proof that the Blues were gunning for right-shot defenders to the point of abandoning the spirit of choosing the best player available, look no further than their selection of big-and-mobile positional defender Will McIsaac in the fifth round. Although McIsaac has an edge to his game and covers ground quickly, there wasn’t enough shown to consider him the “best” protect at 145th overall, not with Leksand J20 brick wall Marcus Gidlof, 43-goal-scoring winger Noah Powell, 81-point center Luke Misa, and QMJHL goal-scoring champion Justin Poirier still there for the taking. But the Blues have an enviable track record of turning middle-round defensemen into NHLers, and the fact that McIsaac plays the right side bodes well for his chances of not only receiving a contract within two years but securing a full-time AHL role as well.
The relative uniformity in size of St. Louis’ 2024 draft class extended from the first pick to the last, with only Mrsic being listed under 6-foot-1. Two additional big-body forwards were added in the seventh round; first off the board was physical QMJHL depth center Antoine Dorion (6-foot-1, 191 pounds) at 209th overall, followed by SKA-1946’s smash-mouth pivot Matvei Korotkiy (6-foot-1, 198 pounds) at 211. While Dorion is injured at the start of his draft+1 season with the Quebec Remparts, Korotkiy is one of the MHL’s top scorers after three weeks of action.