Blues Win Contest Against LA Kings / Trade Talk

The Blues come off of the Staples Center ice with a victory tonight after a hard fought game.

The young kids stepped up in the game. Oshie and Perron scored very finesse goals and their support players were the tough and gritty guys like Janssen, Crombeen and Winchester who came to the table with hits, good board-work, and a couple fights.

Another interesting tidbit about tonight's game was that when Andy McDonald didn't return to the game due to an upper body injury, the team started to play better.

My theory for this is that the kids are getting more ice time and therefore thriving under the new ice time and coaching system.

Hopefully this will mark a turnaround for the Blues and they can start winning on home ice more often to help improve their playoff hopes.

Now onto Trade Talk.

Recently on NHL rumor sites and online newspaper articles, there has been much talk about many skilled players possibly being traded due to the upcoming Olympic games NHL trade freeze in February and the not so far off trading deadline in March.

There are many big name players out there such as Kovalchuk, Marleau, Phaneuf, Souray, Koivu, Selanne, etc. As far as the Blues are concerned, the odd of management making a trade look good.

So far this season, the Blues have shown after half of the season, that they can be a very inconsistent club in terms of being able to score and produce offensively.

A lot of people point to the coaching, which I agree with for the most part but there are also the problems with the players (mainly the veterans).

The veteran players' (Paul Kariya, Andy McDonald, David Backes, Keith Tkachuk, etc) poor production in the first part of the season were a big culprit of why we lost games. With the Western Conference at a very high level of competition again this year, you need those veterans to step in and lead when the team needs it.

Now, that being said, the Blues have around $17 mil coming off of the books this off-season, which is more than enough to go out and sign a superstar caliber player like Ilya Kovalchuk.

With the Blues future uncertain for the rest of the season, seeing management make a trade can be hard to predict.

The Blues are in perfect "pounce mode", meaning that if they chose to, they could get a superstar player with the amount of depth in their system and the constantly growing young talent already present on the parent club.

What it will come down to is what management wants to do. They're going to have to make the best decision for the club that they can. So far, we've been doing pretty well, but I think that if the Blues want to be knocking on the door of a Stanley Cup championship then they will have to have at least 1 superstar on their team to help carry them.

If they can obtain a guy like that then they should have the depth everywhere else to take care of business.

My opinion:

The Blues should take a really hard look at Ilya Kovalchuk if he doesn't sign a contract extension in Atlanta. I'm confident that the Blues could make a deal with Atlanta to make a trade for him and extend his contract out so he can play here for long term.

If Kovalchuk doesn't work out then I would focus on creating a more intimidating blueline by pursuing either Sheldon Souray from Edmonton or Dion Phaneuf from Calgary.

During the offseason I think that the Blues should go the free agent or trade route to obtain a new goaltender. Chris Mason is up for free agency and I think that if he wants more than $3.5 mil per season at a 2 season extension, then I would rather see him walk to free agency and see a younger goalie like Jaroslav Halak, Peka Rinne, or Josh Harding take the starter position and have Conklin continue to do a bang-up job as a backup.

Just something to think about....