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Eklund says Blues want Heatley done by Wednesday? June 22, 2009

As Reported on Hockeybuzz today…

Eklund advises the hockey world that the Blues want to have a deal done to get Heatley to St. Louis by Wednesday, two days before the draft.

I think we need a few grains of salt, a lemon wedge, and some good tequila to analyze that one.

AS we talked about here and many other sites have discussed, Heatley to St. Louis is very hard to imagine. While the Blues have the desire for a top flight player, can they truly afford him with out giving up Brad Boyes (which defeats teh purpose of getting Heatley) and if they can, which young stars do we lose?

Perron? Berglund? Oshie? Pietrangelo? Eller? Backes?

Who is traded now and/or later? Who cannot be re-signed?

It’s a this point I really hope that the front office politely says “no”.  No to thinning out our NHL level depth. No to moving out a young core member. No to tying up roughly 12-15% of the Blues cap hits in one player.

I know teams want to get that name power. You want that guy to drum up media support, to sell tickets, to sell jerseys. At the same time, this isn’t your dad’s NHL anymore. This is not so much a veterans game. This league is dominated by 3 players who have all gained the right to buy alcohol in the last 12 months. It is a young-man’s game now.

This is where the Blues can differ from other teams. Push away the old status quo and really stck with their kids. Will it be hard to keep your home grown talent when you could haeve offer sheets and high priced offers. However, at the same time the Blues have to believe that they can develop their rebuilt core and keep them around. With the cap going down  (for at least the next two years it looks like), you need to be able to control your contracts. The Blues will get great control over their group.

The young core of this team is as follows (argueably):
TJ Oshie
Patrik Berglund
Erik Johnson
David Perron
David Backes
Brad Boyes
Alex Pietrangelo
Jay McClement
Roman Polak
All of these players are under contract for at least 2 more years or will be RFA’s in that time period.

The current roster situation gives you a large amount of control over how much your core makes, allowing you to spend elsewhere. However, that control doesn’t mean you add a $7.5mil cap hit.

THe Blues have a chance to say “we have our core, we arent moving them and in the long term interest of this organization, we are going to retain these players”. How many teams will be able to do this? Not many. Edmonton  might. Phoenix has no money to begin with. Chicago has spent a ton (Campbell) and are going to have MAJOR cap issues retaining Kane, Toews, and Versteeg down the road.

By saying no, the Blues have the chance to do what few teams can do, kep their most important long term peices while they are still contributing now. Heatley all but kills that chance. The time is not now. The Blues got in to the Playoffs minus a top 3 forward and a top pairing Dman, lets see what Kariya and EJ give us first. Save the money now to dabble at the deadline if you want to add a body.