The St. Louis Blues have decisions to make with the March 3rd trade deadline fastly approaching. Currently sixth in the Central Division and fifth in the Western Conference Wild Card race with a 23-22-3 record, they will have to figure out in the coming weeks if they will be buyers or sellers at the deadline. All indications point to them being sellers as they have multiple veterans on expiring deals they will be looking to unload before losing them for nothing come July.
The time has come to move on from team captain Ryan O’Reilly who won the 2019 Conn Smythe Trophy and helped the Blues win the 2019 Stanley Cup. On the latest TSN Insider Trading episode, TSN NHL insider Darren Dreger reported that O’Reilly is ‘officially’ on the NHL trade market with the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline five weeks from this Friday.
“The Ryan O’Reilly speculation started prior to the beginning of the NHL regular season, and it has continued, but the St. Louis Blues have reached the point in the regular season that they genuinely want to gauge the interest around the NHL in the star pending-unrestricted free agent forward,” Dreger said.
“We know he’s hurt, he’s going to a be out for a while, and it’s still early because the Blues, like all clubs who are looking at the playoff picture, don’t know if they are willing to go all in yet. But the ask for Ryan O’Reilly is going to be similar what normally would be for a player of similar stature – you’re talking about draft picks, you’re talking about a prospect, the draft pick could be determined by the quality of the prospect so, it is again still early, but Ryan O’Reilly is officially in play.”
It will be a situation worth monitoring around the NHL, as there will be plenty of interested teams looking to add a player of O’Reilly’s caliber. The 31-year-old center is currently on injured reserve and will likely not be back until at least after the all-star break. With his unknown timeline to return from injury, it is still unsure how that will affect his cost on the trade market.
One thing is for sure, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong wants to do his due diligence now so he can gauge the interest of who’s interested and what they will be willing to offer.
On the season, O’Reilly has appeared in 37 games scoring just ten goals and six assists. He hasn’t exactly been the premiere two-way physical presence he was for the last seven years. Even though the numbers this season have not been what many expect of O’Reilly, a change of scenery and better talent around him could be precisely what he needs to turn things around. O’Reilly is in the last year of a seven-year contract with a $7.5 million AAV.
