Tyler Bozak a Blue

[evil roy]

Report: Bozak heading to Blues on 3-year, $15M deal
https://www.thescore.com/nhl/news/1564041

5 million for a 32 year old who's only scored >20 goals once. I guess this means we won't be seeing O'reilley in a Blues uniform

[JCShutout]

STOP SIGNING EXPENSIVE 3RD LINERS!

The Blues now have 6 contracts paying 3rd line forwards and D men too much. One or two of those is reasonable. Sometimes you gotta spend for the right kind of role player anchor, or you get a player who declines more quickly than expected, but intentionally signing this many pretty good/meh guys for lots of dough is why we suck, but not enough to land franchise-changing draft picks.

Before today, I thought the Blues absolutely HAD to trade one of those contracts, and hopefully two. Now we HAVE to somehow jetteson 3, preferably 4. Awesome work Doug.

[theohall]

You can’t win with culture and character alone though, as teams find out every summer when they overpay role players. You need talent.

[JCShutout]

Acquiring ROR makes me hate this signing a little less, but I still think 3/15 is going to be a bad 3 years. I just see Lehtera production in the future and I cringe. I guess that's okay production for the 3rd line, but not for that cost.

[theohall]

The Futility of Bad Teams Doing Anything More Tyler Dellow from the Athletic

A bad team that's run properly should bear an uncanny resemblance to a Dickensian urchin at the July 1 free-agent auction. They should be standing off to the side, hands in the pockets of their tattered clothing, as they stare wide-eyed at good teams spending money on deals with term. Instead, due to a mix of delusion, requirement to spend money and revenue sharing, you see a lot of bad teams bidding wildly on players who aren't difference makers.

He goes on to describe what happens with players who have played alot ( 85% of the games possible with at least 10 minutes average time on ice per game) in their 31 and 32 year old seasons and how much they drop off in their 33 year old season like we saw with Steen last season and which is where the Blues will be with Bozak after the 18-19 season and still having 2 more years on that contract.

[Robb_K]

The Futility of Bad Teams Doing Anything More Tyler Dellow from the Athletic

A bad team that's run properly should bear an uncanny resemblance to a Dickensian urchin at the July 1 free-agent auction. They should be standing off to the side, hands in the pockets of their tattered clothing, as they stare wide-eyed at good teams spending money on deals with term. Instead, due to a mix of delusion, requirement to spend money and revenue sharing, you see a lot of bad teams bidding wildly on players who aren't difference makers.

He goes on to describe what happens with players who have played alot ( 85% of the games possible with at least 10 minutes average time on ice per game) in their 31 and 32 year old seasons and how much they drop off in their 33 year old season like we saw with Steen last season and which is where the Blues will be with Bozak after the 18-19 season and still having 2 more years on that contract.

But he provides quality depth at centre and flexibility, in that he can also play the wing. And he's very good at faceoffs (as is O'Reilly). So that helps The Blues' possession and helps make the defence stronger by gaining possession in the defensive zone. Teams thatn go to The Playoffs and want to go deep need that kind of depth to withstand spates of injuries. I'm glad he's on the team. Army might be able to trade him in a couple of years before his contract would hurt the team.

[theohall]

Bozak is fine for depth this season. But they overpaid and for too long a term given his age. Don't expect squat from Bozak in 19-20.

Besides, Thomas should be getting every opportunity to at least be the 3rd line center ahead of Bozak and on the power play ahead of Bozak, but knowing Yeo, Thomas will wind up playing less than 8 minutes per night and next to no PP time in favor of a role-player like Bozak, which is what he is,

Let's know over-value him the way Armstrong did with this contract.

[WaukeeBlues]

Does it really matter he's getting paid $5 million? I'm only partially kidding.

We're not in cap trouble and won't be as far as I can tell for the next several years. Schenn and Pietrangelo are the next guys we're going to have to pay and that's not until the summer of 2020.

After this year's RFA's get taken care of (which we still have the space to do) there's really nobody else. Bouwmeester comes off after this year, that's $5.4 by itself. Allen is here (right or wrong) for another three seasons...

Even if Thomas/Kyrou make the team and light the world on fire they still have ELC's for 3 years.

The term wasn't too long, I don't think at $5 that that's insane. I just fail the see the problem when help down the middle was exactly what this team needed and we're not sacrificing any future deals for this. Perron has a 5 team no trade list and Bozak has a 10 team no trade list. So if we really have to trade them down the road we can.

[cardsfan04]

Does it really matter he's getting paid $5 million? I'm only partially kidding.

We're not in cap trouble and won't be as far as I can tell for the next several years. Schenn and Pietrangelo are the next guys we're going to have to pay and that's not until the summer of 2020.

After this year's RFA's get taken care of (which we still have the space to do) there's really nobody else. Bouwmeester comes off after this year, that's $5.4 by itself. Allen is here (right or wrong) for another three seasons...

Even if Thomas/Kyrou make the team and light the world on fire they still have ELC's for 3 years.

The term wasn't too long, I don't think at $5 that that's insane. I just fail the see the problem when help down the middle was exactly what this team needed and we're not sacrificing any future deals for this. Perron has a 5 team no trade list and Bozak has a 10 team no trade list. So if we really have to trade them down the road we can.

That's pretty much where I stand too. I'll concede that it's not completely ideal. 2 years/$8 mil might have been better. But, I think he can help the team, and I don't think 3 years or $5 mil AAV is going to hamstring us too much even if it's on the high end.

[Robb_K]

Some people don't consider that signing Bozak gave Army the freedom to not be so desperate to get O'Reilly, that it kept The Blues from not overpaying for him by having to give up Thomas, Kyrou, or Parayko. His signing allowed them to acquire O'Reilly for spare parts (Thompson, 1st and 2nd, while dumping their unwanted contracts of Berglund and Sobotka, without having to give up even more assets to do so. I'll gladly take Bozak's not-so-practical contract (which also will be movable after 1.5-2 years, to become a contender again, without giving up some of our low-cost, high skilled future.