There's no question the signing of defenseman Justin Faulk bolsters an already excellent team looking to repeat their Stanley Cup performance this upcoming season. However, for the St. Louis Blues, signing Faulk to a contract worth $6.5 million annually does throw a bit of a wrench into their plans to keep two key pieces of their team who will become unrestricted free agents after this season; forward Brayden Schenn and defenseman Alex Pietrangelo.
The Blues are currently at the cap ceiling. A little over actually, but enough will be saved through long-term injury reserve that the team will not need to worry. For now, anyway. With Schenn and Pietrangelo becoming UFA at the end of 2019-2020, it won't be easy to keep the team together, and GM Doug Armstrong realizes that.
"Ultimately the pie is so big and [Faulk] has taken out a slice of it now, but our goal was to do this with the understanding we felt we still had the ability getting creative and doing other things to sign those guys. That's still our mandate," Armstrong told NHL.com.
Besides Schenn and Pietrangelo, Jay Bouwmeester will also become UFA on July 1st, 2020. Boumeester will be 36 at that time so there's a good chance they let him walk. That removes $3.25 million from the team's books. However, according to CapFriendly, five players will become restricted free agents, including two with arbitration rights. These include Robby Fabbri, Samuel Blais, MacKenzie MacEachern (arbitration rights), Vince Dunn and Derrick Pouliot (arbitration rights). While everything seems very good for the Blues right now, the end of the upcoming season will likely lead to some tough choices.
Meanwhile, according the Jeremy Rutherford of The Athletic, Armstrong addressed the situation regarding his upcoming UFAs with Faulk's camp during negotiations.
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