The St. Louis Blues made a shocking acquisition Saturday by trading for Cam Fowler from the Anaheim Geese. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the group isn’t accomplished making strikes simply but.
Friedman stories that the Blues want to transfer on from veteran winger Brandon Saad after making him a wholesome scratch Saturday evening.
Any Saad commerce would contain some hurdles. He’s not performing as much as his $4.5M wage for this yr and subsequent, to not point out a full no-trade clause for this season that turns right into a 12-team no-trade record subsequent yr.
Based mostly on Friedman’s description of the setting, Saad seems keen to amend his no-trade safety to facilitate a deal. Nonetheless, that doesn’t make different groups extra fascinated by including an getting old winger struggling to attain.
Saad rebounded from a disappointing 2022-23 season with a 26-goal, 42-point effort final yr. He performed in all 82 common season video games for the primary time for the reason that 2017-18 season and posted the strongest possession numbers of his profession as a member of the Blues group.
His play hasn’t been as promising this yr. Saad has scored 4 objectives and 10 factors in 27 video games for St. Louis this season, which might be his lowest goal-per-game tempo since his sophomore marketing campaign within the 2012-13 season.
That is seemingly the primary contributing consider St. Louis’ incapacity to maneuver Saad at this level within the common season. Many aggressive groups don’t have the cap house mandatory to accumulate Saad and so they’d seemingly wish to apply it to a participant projecting larger than 12 objectives on the marketing campaign.
