NFL Tickets
It’s that time of year in the NHL. The time when trade rumors start heating up, deals start getting made and the fans start yelling that their team has to make a deal or the season is done for. Such is the landscape for almost all the teams in the league, including the St. Louis Blues. There are always lots of rumors going around, especially as the trade deadline approaches. One of the hotter ones of late has been a deal that would include the Blues’ Kevin Shattenkirk for the Tampa Bay Lightning‘s Jonathan Drouin.
This deal makes absolutely no sense. Scouring the message boards and comment sections, you would think that Drouin is the second coming and the cure to all that ails the Blues. While there is quite an upside to the young player, there is no guarantee he will live up to expectations and no guarantee he will score.
Let’s look at all the ways this deal would be extremely foolish. The Blues know what they have in Shattenkirk. When healthy, he is talented enough on both ends of the ice to be a real contender for a Norris Trophy. He is an All-Star and a top tier player, regardless of the fact that he is currently being used as a second line defender.
Shattenkirk is a straw that stirs the drink — to borrow a phrase — when it comes to the Blues’ powerplay. Despite ranking in the top five in the league for much of the season, Blues fans know that those numbers are fool’s gold. The Blues’ powerplay might rank highly in percentages, but there are times when the man-advantage unit looks worse than a junior-A hockey team. To take away one of your most important players on an already shaky unit just doesn’t make sense.
Drouin has quite a few problems on his side. With only 89 NHL games under his belt, he is already demanding to be dealt away from the club that gave him his break into the league. On top of that, one could easily question his mentality and toughness. While anyone can read negativity into words in print, it just doesn’t read very well when Drouin is complaining about the lack of space and how much of a grind the AHL is during his current reconditioning stint.
Drouin just hasn’t done enough in reality to warrant the fan reaction he is getting either. He is nothing but potential right now. He had 32 points and 4 goals in 70 games last season. Those numbers aren’t shabby for a rookie. Want to know who had more? Jaden Schwartz had 56 in his first full 82 game season with the Blues. Paul Stastny had 78 points in his first season in the NHL. Patrik Berglund had 47 points in his first season with the Blues.
Berglund might be the most applicable to the argument. He played about the same number of games as Drouin (76 to 70) as a rookie, scored more points than Drouin as a rookie and has widely been panned by the fanbase as a disappointment afterward. So why get rid of an All-Star defenseman for a forward that hasn’t done a ton and yet demanded a trade in only his second year of his professional career? For a team that has relied too heavily on their goaltenders this season, why trade a good defender for a complete unknown?
The only answer that makes sense, is if the Blues truly believe they cannot reach an agreement with Shattenkirk on a new deal before free agency in the summer of 2017. Even if that is the reason, there has to be more the Blues can get in return than Drouin. Drouin could very well go on to be the next Vincent Lecavalier or Steven Stamkos. He could also be the next name in a very long list of players that were highly touted only to have fruitless careers. If you’re going to trade away Kevin Shattenkirk, you better be extremely certain of what you’re getting in return. That isn’t Jonathan Drouin at this point.
Share 
