The blinds in the second-floor office are half-open. The light flicks on sometime before practice begins. The chair farthest from the door faces the window, its back to the desk. The architect watches his construction site come to life.
For most Blues practices, that’s how general manager Doug Armstrong consumes the action on the ice below him at Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights, peering over the benches to watch his coaches, his players — his projects. When he watched his club throughout training camp, there were different groups he could theoretically see.
There were the dwindling players who helped the Blues win their only Stanley Cup in 2019, holding onto the coastline in hopes of bridging one successful era to another. There were the veterans who were supposed to extend the contention window, now trying to avoid the blasphemous thought of missing the playoffs three years in a row.
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There were the franchise cornerstones around whom Armstrong and the Blues chose to build instead of detonating, key cogs signed until the end of the decade. There were the kids — both drafted and offer-sheeted — offering the hope of something more promising in the years to come.
It’s a group in transition for Armstrong and the Blues. But if you ask Armstrong, perhaps it’s a different phase of the organization’s metamorphosis.
“You’re never sure how you’re going to be able to do it, but we brought in good players with good pedigree that are in the league now,” Armstrong said. “Now, they’re ready to take off. I do think we’re in a different phase. I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays itself out.”
What exactly is the different phase?
Well, the Blues are past accumulating assets. They’re on to developing them and pushing the older wave to qualify for the postseason.
Over the summer, the Blues made their biggest splashes by bringing in defenseman Philip Broberg (No. 8 overall pick in 2019) and forward Dylan Holloway (No. 14 pick in 2020), prying them away from Edmonton with seldom-used offer sheets. The moves cost them a lot, in terms of salary (a combined $6,871,374 cap hit the next two seasons) and in terms of draft capital.
When accounting for the interconnected Kevin Hayes salary dump to Pittsburgh, the acquisition of Mathieu Joseph from Ottawa, the transaction to reacquire a draft pick from the Penguins, the offer sheet compensation to Edmonton and the ransom to quell the threat of Edmonton matching the offer sheets, the cost of doing business became — well, costly.
In? Broberg, Holloway, Joseph and a 2026 fifth-round pick. Out? A 2025 second-round pick, a 2026 second-round pick, a 2025 third-round pick, a 2028 third-round pick, prospect Paul Fischer and Hayes.
Add in that the Blues traded their 2025 fourth-rounder to Columbus for Alexandre Texier and their 2025 seventh-rounder to Detroit for Jakub Vrana and St. Louis has just three picks next summer: a first, a fifth and a sixth. It’s not a draft board indicative of a team that has missed the playoffs in two straight seasons.
“We have restocked the cupboard,” Armstrong said. “We’re going to have a thin draft this year, the way it sits now. We don’t have a second, third or a fourth, but we also have young players at 22 or 23 that were former first-round picks. You have to give to get.”
Part of why Armstrong was comfortable parting with future assets is the number of pieces the Blues have gathered across the past year-plus, essentially since the 2023 trade deadline when St. Louis sold Vladimir Tarasenko, Ryan O’Reilly, Ivan Barbashev, Niko Mikkola and Noel Acciari.
In adding Broberg, Holloway and picking defenseman Adam Jiricek at No. 16, the Blues now have 10 players drafted in the first round since 2019. Seven of those players — Broberg, Holloway, Jiricek, Zach Dean, Dalibor Dvorsky, Otto Stenberg and Theo Lindstein — have been acquired in the past year and a half. Zack Bolduc, Jake Neighbours and Jimmy Snuggerud were already in the fold.
There’s reason to be excited about that.
Across the past six drafts, only Montreal (12) and Buffalo (11) have more former first-round picks in their system than the Blues (10). Across the past five drafts, only Chicago (10) has more than St. Louis (nine). Across the past four drafts, it’s just Chicago (nine) and Nashville (eight) that have more than the Blues’ seven.
You get the picture. The Blues have a prospect pool overflowing with future contributors.
But is that enough?
“The Blues have a lot of depth in their system,” said Chris Peters, a draft and prospects analyst for FloHockey. “They don’t have a super-great high end where it’s going to be a lot of first-line players. Some of these guys could develop into that but not a lot of first line (players); there’s some good secondary scoring here. There’s probably a top-four defenseman here. Maybe there’s a (No.) 4, 5 defenseman here.
“From right now, and development does not move in a straight line, it looks like they have a lot of mid-range guys that are going to help them in the middle of their lineup but maybe not in the top of their lineup.”
While the Blues have piled up first-rounders, they have not piled up highly drafted first-rounders. Only Broberg and Dvorsky were drafted in the top 10. On average, those 10 players were drafted at 19.8. Only eight teams have, on average, lower-drafted first-rounders currently in their system.
It makes for a lot of serviceable NHL players but maybe not difference-makers.
“They’re lottery tickets, but how many of them have star as a ceiling?” Peters said. “If you’re projecting them out, you at least have some idea of where they’re going to go. They have a lot of guys that project to contribute. Honestly, when you have more of those, you increase the odds that one of them is going to overshoot what you expected of them.”
The potential jackpots could be Dvorsky (thanks to his supreme skill) and Jiricek (whose evaluation was maybe stunted by his knee injury). But, Peters said, a lot of the other prospects are more known quantities with floors and ceilings a bit closer to each other.
“I think they did a really good job of getting guys that are going to play in the NHL,” Peters said. “It’s a lot harder than it sounds. Just getting guys that’ll be part of your roster is really difficult, especially at the number they have within their system. I think there’s a lot of guys where I’m like, ‘That guy is going to play.’”
One Eastern Conference evaluator cautioned against the approach of picking up middle-of-the-lineup talent, which Broberg and Holloway could be considered at this point in their careers.
“You’re adding at the middle or bottom of the lineup and hoping they’re moving up, as opposed to going a little bit more all-in and getting a first-line, top-pair guy that’s going to push guys down,” they said.
Essentially, the Blues need some of those guys to play above their draft level. And then they need some of their later-round picks to hit as if they were top-end selections. That’s not unique to the Blues relative to the rest of the league.
The good news? The Blues have shown that they can find players who produce above their draft slot.
Robert Thomas was picked 20th in 2017. He’s fourth in his draft class in both games played and points.
Jordan Kyrou went 35th in 2016. He’s ninth in goals and 10th in points among his draft class.
Jake Neighbours was 26th in 2020. He’s eighth in goals scored in his draft class.
Toss in players like Tage Thompson or Vince Dunn and the Blues have a decent recent history of hitting on picks. Of course, the Blues have also missed big. Klim Kostin hasn’t panned out. Dominik Bokk never played an NHL game, but he helped the Blues acquire Justin Faulk.
And so there is another avenue for the Blues to pursue at this stage of their transition: trading from their prospect surplus to supplement the NHL roster.
“There’s probably a path given his history to move those players for the pieces that can get him there,” an Eastern Conference evaluator said.
Bokk (in the Faulk trade) and Thompson (in the trade that brought O’Reilly to St. Louis) are the easy examples of Armstrong’s willingness to deal from his prospect pool to help build the NHL roster. Older examples include Erik Johnson’s trade to Colorado or swapping David Rundblad for the pick that became Tarasenko.
Armstrong could be given another opportunity to do so, and it wouldn’t be a new part of his playbook.
“You have to accumulate as many puzzle pieces as you can, and then at some point, you have to start making the puzzle,” Armstrong said. “I go back to when I first got here, I thought Larry Pleau and John Davidson did a great job of acquiring a lot of young players, and then we moved some of those chess pieces around to build a team.
“I think we’re getting in that team-building mode now. We expect to compete. If it’s not fitting in with our puzzle, we have to move pieces along to find better fits.”
So while the Blues may not have the choose-your-own-adventure assets like draft picks available, they do own about a dozen half-baked prospects in the pipeline. And other teams know Armstrong is open to wheeling and dealing.
“Army is not shy,” a Western Conference evaluator said. “He is not shy. Even before the offer sheets, he was really aggressive.”
There are potential pitfalls along the way.
What if the Blues underperform and miss the playoffs again, resulting in next year’s draft capital becoming more valuable than anticipated? What if Snuggerud’s or Bolduc’s development stalls? What if Jiricek’s injury history is an ongoing concern? What if the former Oilers don’t adjust to bigger roles?
These are risks the Blues and Armstrong have to be willing to take in order to whip around a tight U-turn back into contention, and they’ve put themselves in a position to win big on the right bets.
Armstrong compares the current state of the Blues to the teams in 2010-12, teams that were incubating a young nucleus that included Alex Pietrangelo, David Perron, Jaden Schwartz, T.J. Oshie, Kevin Shattenkirk, Ian Cole, Chris Stewart and Tarasenko.
“We like the depth of our group now,” Armstrong said. “We’re going to continue to try and add to that, but we’re at that point now where we were in 2010, ‘11, ‘12 where we’ve accumulated assets.
“Now we have to build a team and I’m excited about the opportunity to build a team.”