Tarasenko on the trade block!?

When the St. Louis Blues take to the ice tonight to take on the Nashville Predators for the very first time under new head coach Craig Berube you can bet that all eyes will be on the team’s leadership group of Alex Pietrangelo, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ryan O’Reilly. 

To put it lightly, the Blues have simply not been good enough this season after an offseason in which it looked like the team was ramping things up for a healthy playoff run in 2018-19. Just two months into the season and the Blues look more like a Draft Lottery contender than a Stanley Cup contender, which obviously led to the firing of former head coach Mike Yeo and has now led to some seriously wild trade speculation. The name at the center of rumors coming out of St. Louis: Sniper Vladimir Tarasenko. 

With six goals and 16 points in 19 games this season and with four consecutive 30+ goal seasons in Tarasenko’s back pocket, there’s no denying his elite level skill. But with so much on the line in St. Louis and with GM Doug Armstrong on the hot seat, could the Blues be forced to move their most consistent scorer? 

In his latest 31 Thoughts column for Sportsnet, Elliotte Friedman wonders aloud whether the Blues might entertain a Tarasenko trade this season and what the team’s plans are for the 26 year old Russian moving forward.

Check it out:

At times, there’ve been indications of the organization’s frustration with Vladimir Tarasenko. No one’s ever said it on the record, and I’ve never heard his name in a specific trade rumour. The Blues have to know it’s a hard trade to win, because you’re giving up a great talent. There’s no bigger change they could make, if they wanted to.

Indeed there’s no bigger trade the team could make… but there’s probably also no bigger mistake they could make if they elected to trade Tarasenko. After all, the 6 foot tall, 225 pound beast of a winger is one of the most consistent goal scorers in the entire NHL and is signed to a reasonable $7.5 million cap hit for the next four seasons. It’s probably pretty safe to say that he’ll be staying put in St. Louis. Then again… if the team continues to falter even after this most recent coaching change and if Armstrong is eventually shown the door, things suddenly become a lot murkier.