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Blues Thought of the Day: 05-06-09 May 7, 2009

There are several teams (especially in the West) that have been bottom half / bottom 5 of their conference for a while who have stored up some good young players. The three closest to the Blues are Chicago, Edmonton, and Phoenix.

Last year (07-08) those three teams all competed for the 8 spot for quite a while with young teams. After that push how did those teams follow up in the off-season?

Chicago:
Signed Huet, Campbell, and Matt Walker.
Let Rene Bourque, Williams, and Perreault go.

Edmonton:
Traded Pitkanen for Cole.
Traded Torres for Brule.
Traded Stoll and Greene for Visnovsky.

Phoenix:
Traded Ballard, Boyton + for Jokinen.
Did not re-sign Vrbata.

Chicago upgraded, Edmonton sidegraded, and Phoenix traded away depth on the blue line for a forward (looked good at the time but didn’t replace the loss of depth = downgrade).

In my opinion the Blues are sitting between Chicago and Edmonton. The forward proved they can score. I know people complain about the scoring, but this team had two 30 goal scorers, two 20 goal scorers (would have been 3 if Andy played all year) and 6 players totaling 10-19 goals. That’s a total of 10 players scoring 10 or more goals (that’s basically the first 3 lines).

Where did the Blues struggle? Puck movement and transition. Hard for your forwards to score when you’re working twice as hard to just get it out of your end and through the neutral zone. Yes EJ is coming back and Petro should be here, but the Blues are one upgrade from take a Chicago like step.

My take is that the Blues need to take that chance and pursue Bouwmeester or a trade for an impact defenseman.

Thoughts?