Raise your hand if you actually believed that the Blues would make a major trade today. Come on, raise them high.
Now slap yourselves in the foreheads with them. The Blues have an unstable ownership situation right now, with the sale to Tom Stillman’s ownership group incomplete. They have three key forwards out in Alex Steen, Matt D’Agostini, and Jamie Langenbrunner, that, when they return, will be like getting players from a trade without making one.
Did you honestly believe that the Blues were going to go for depth defensemen when their defense is, generally, perfectly fine. There’s no point in messing with something that works via adding small cogs that add minimal impact.
Teams shouldn’t make trades just to make trades, and GM Doug Armstrong is aware of that. This quote from Norm Sanders is exactly what you want to hear from a GM come the trade deadline:
Armstrong: “We were actively looking to see if there was an area to improve our depth and we couldn’t do it.”#stlblues
— Norm Sanders (@NormSanders) February 27, 2012
If your team isn’t doing substantial things to improve itself, then at least it didn’t do anything major to shoot itself in the foot. With the Blues’ questionable ownership situation, this was the best that fans could hope for.
Could having some sort of ownership stability help? Of course. It could have gotten the Blues that one scoring threat that’d be so grand to have. Are the Blues doomed without it? No, and hopefully this summer they’ll be able to be stable enough to snag one.
Patience is a virtue.