Since owner Tom Stillman took control of the Blues in 2012, the club has spent near the NHL’s salary cap every season. General manager Doug Armstrong and assistant GM Ryan Miller have had to perform some cap gymnastics, but nothing like the hoops they’re jumping through now.
The Blues were in Anaheim on Sunday night and had just 20 healthy players — the bare minimum — available for a 4-1 loss to the Ducks. If Ryan O’Reilly didn’t return to the lineup after missing four games on the COVID-19 protocol, they would have been one player short.
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It’s a situation that has led the Blues to inquire with the NHL about the potential of receiving some relief on the $81.5 million cap. They’re obviously not the only ones in need of some financial flexibility; with the league testing players every three days and losing players almost every day, many teams are pinching pennies.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Athletic over the weekend that in the wake of increasing COVID-19 cases, there are no plans to permit clubs to eclipse the cap, a luxury that was allowed last season. It’s something the league and the NHL Players’ Association would have to approve.
“No dialogue at all with the Players’ Association on this issue at this point in time,” Daly wrote in an email. “If we had teams facing serious manpower shortages on a regular basis due to COVID, we would obviously revisit. That isn’t (and hasn’t been) the case.”
It hasn’t been the case with the Blues yet, but it could get further complicated soon with the pending return of Oskar Sundqvist from long-term injury reserve (LTIR). He was required to miss 10 games and 24 days, which will make him eligible to play Tuesday in Winnipeg.
There’s no guarantee the Blues’ plan is to bring Sundqvist back right away, but for the purpose of examining the team’s dilemma and its options, let’s assume he comes back in the next game or two.
I solicited the help of PuckPedia to break it all down.
As mentioned, the Blues are operating in LTIR instead of the traditional cap because they put Sundqvist, who is still recovering from knee and hip surgery, on LTIR at the start of the season.
That allows teams such as the Blues in that situation to spend the equivalent of Sundqvist’s $2.75 million cap hit while he’s out. In Sunday’s game, the Blues were using all but $14,000 of that LTIR money.
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It’s the reason the Blues, when they placed defensemen Torey Krug and Niko Mikkola on the COVID-19 list, were forced to call up Calle Rosen instead of prospect Scott Perunovich, who has 16 points (two goals, 14 assists) in nine games with the American Hockey League’s Springfield (Mass.) Thunderbirds.
At the time of the move, the Blues had about $764,000 in LTIR money. Perunovich’s base salary is $925,000, but in these situations, teams have to account for a player’s potential performance bonuses, too, and Perunovich’s bonuses max out at $2.175 million.
“That’s cap-related,” Armstrong said of Rosen’s call-up. “One of the reasons Scott can’t be here is because of his contract. The bonuses in his contract are so high … it does have ramifications on recalls.”
| Player | Games missed | Status |
|---|---|---|
4 | Returned | |
4 | Returned | |
3 | Out | |
3 | Out | |
1 | Out | |
1 | Out |
But when Sundqvist comes back, assuming Brayden Schenn doesn’t go on LTIR, which we’ll get into shortly, the Blues will go back to operating under regular cap conditions. Their current cap hit is $83.9 million, and according to PuckPedia, the club needs to be just under $82 million, so it will have to shed about $2 million.
So what are the options?
Well, the easiest, which the Blues don’t want, is if Schenn’s upper-body injury turned out to be long-term. He left last week’s 1-0 win over Chicago when he was tripped by the Blackhawks’ Alex DeBrincat and crashed hard into the boards. The team’s No. 1 center returned to the game and played the next two in Los Angeles and San Jose, but he exited the Sharks game early.
On Friday, Armstrong said Schenn had returned to St. Louis for further evaluation.
“He tried to play and the injury got aggravated, so we decided to fly him home,” Armstrong said. “He’s going to see our doctors over the next couple of days, and we’ll re-evaluate everything when the team returns from the road trip.”
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In eight full games and one period of the ninth game, Schenn had six points (three goals and three assists).
“It’s a tough loss, and I feel for Schenner,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “He’s one of our guys that fights through anything, whether it’s injuries or things like that. He’s a battler. It’s unfortunate that we lost him here. Hopefully, he’s back sooner than later, but it’s a tough loss.”
If Schenn is out weeks or months, the Blues could put him on LTIR, and they’d have no issues being able to fit everyone on the roster financially. Like with Sundqvist, the club would be able to spend Schenn’s $6.5 million on replacement players during his absence.
But if Schenn doesn’t expect to miss 10 games and 24 days, then the Blues will have to look at alternatives.
Barring any other injuries or positive COVID-19 tests, Armstrong will have to do some work to remove $2 million from the roster.
Would they send rookie Jake Neighbours back to the Edmonton Oil Kings of the Western Hockey League? He played his eighth game of the season Sunday, so he can play more before the year counts as the first year of his three-year, entry-level contract. They could assign him to his junior-hockey club, but that would free up just $866,667.
Would they waive Clifford and, if he clears, assign him to the AHL? He has a $1 million AAV, which the Blues could bury in the minors because it’s under the $1.125 million threshold to do so. They could do that, but it still wouldn’t get the Blues to the magic number.
And if they had to move two or three players off the roster to fit under the cap, they wouldn’t be able to put a 20-man lineup on the ice.
Of course, players returning from the COVID-19 protocol list would help, but Krug and Mikkola perhaps won’t be eligible to come back until Sunday at the earliest. And who’s to say that this is the last of the team’s cases?
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The NHL continues to test players every three days, which has led to an increased number of positives compared with other leagues. All of the Blues players have been vaccinated, which is minimizing the symptoms, but they’re still sitting out 10 days.
“The symptoms that the players are getting are very minor,” Armstrong said. “I think in today’s world, it’s very difficult to put a curb on it. Societies are open now. Our players are doing the best they can do. But it’s just a reality of today’s world that if you test every three days, you’re going to catch people, and asymptomatic people are going to get caught in the web.”
O’Reilly’s symptoms included having his energy zapped and a lot of coughing.
“We all want to be responsible, but it’s tough,” he said. “It’s not just our team. You look around the league, it’s happening everywhere. … It’s frustrating, especially when guys are feeling good and don’t feel like they don’t have any symptoms. It’s tough that way, but it’s out of our control. It is what it is and we’ve just got to keep moving forward, hang on and hopefully no more.”
However, if there are more, the Blues might be suiting up as few as 19, or even 18 players.
“We’re very close to having to play short because of these COVID (cases) if we sustain any more,” Armstrong said. “If we sustain any injuries, we’re going to have to play short per the guidelines the way they’re set now.”
One way to help alleviate the COVID-19 issue would be for the NHL to amend Section 50.10(e) from its rulebook and make an exception for teams dealing with a significant number of cases.
That was permitted in 2020-21, and in fact, it allowed the Minnesota Wild to play several games when cap implications wouldn’t have allowed them to otherwise. They were allowed to call up players making no more than $1 million and put them on the roster with no cap hit, as long as they were limited to fewer than 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies because of COVID-19.
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But as Daly told The Athletic, there have been no discussions with the NHLPA on that front to this point.
“We were talking about that a little bit,” said Blues defenseman Colton Parayko, who is the team’s player representative for the NHLPA. “I don’t know if we really necessarily thought it was going to get to this — calling guys up and not. It’s something that you want to maybe look into, but I don’t think that we thought that was where it was going to go.”
The Blues have four players on COVID-19 protocol — Ville Husso, Clifford, Krug and Mikkola — with a combined AAV of $9,037,500. But they can’t replace any of them.
After a 5-0 start, they’re 2-2-1 in their past five games, when players started leaving the lineup.
“Doug has done a great job of putting a team together with a lot of depth, whether it’s the group of people we have here or in the minors,” Berube said. “We’ve got guys that are capable of coming up and filling in and playing. Part of coaching is adjusting and putting new combinations together, people being put in different roles and asked to do different things.
“But what we’ve got going on here, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s running through the league, and that’s the way it is. So I believe something should be done.”
(Top photo: Kiyoshi Mio / USA Today)
