The Winnipeg Jets have acquired Paul Stastny from the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a 2018 first-round pick, forward Erik Foley and a conditional 2020 fourth-round pick. St. Louis will retain 50% of Stastny’s remaining contract, which will expire at the end of this season.
The fourth-round pick will not be sent if the Blues sign Foley, who is a junior at Providence College and could become an unrestricted free agent if he plays out his entire collegiate career and waits until August of 2019 to sign. The Jets’ first-round pick is also lottery protected, meaning it will get pushed forward if somehow they end up with a top-3 pick. Winnipeg would need to fall out of the playoff race entirely, which is very unlikely at this point of the season.
Stastny needed to waive his no-trade clause to go to Winnipeg, and it doesn’t take much to realize why. The Jets are legitimate contenders for the Stanley Cup this season, and by adding another experienced center will be even tougher to take on in the playoffs. Stastny can slot in behind Mark Scheifele and Bryan Little until Adam Lowry returns, and be part of a nearly six-deep group of centers afterwards. The team will have centers playing the wing, when everyone is healthy, something that is becoming more and more desirable around the NHL.
Though he’s not the 70-point first line center of his youth, Stastny still has 40 points in 63 games this season, the fifth consecutive year with 40 or more. Unfortunately, those 805 career regular season games come with just 55 postseason contests, as his teams have had early exits in most of his playoff experiences. He’ll get another chance this year, and hopefully be able to take some of the pressure off the top two lines.
For the Blues, this is the second year that they’ve dealt a pending UFA despite being in a playoff race. St. Louis has had a rough 2018 so far, but like Kevin Shattenkirk last season, have dealt Stastny before letting him walk for nothing even though they still have their sights set on the postseason. He’s scheduled to be one of the top center options in free agency, and even ranked #8 on our Midseason UFA Power Rankings.
Stastny is on the final season of a four-year $28MM contract signed in 2014—when Winnipeg GM Kevin Cheveldayoff also pursued him—but will only carry a $3.5MM cap hit after salary retention. That retention isn’t to old open cap space for the Jets, but to actually save on salary expenditures over the last few months. The Jets have plenty of room, but aren’t a cap ceiling team financially.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Winnepeg finally does something
So I guess we are sellers at deadline? So much for the great season we started with. They just traded a blues fan favorite and brought back some magic beans…. Armstrong you’re screwing it all up
Stastny was likely gone after this year though and he’s really underperformed. Not too damning of a trade for the team (even though I think the Blues will have more trades coming- which honestly may be the best course of action).
As a Blues fan, this needed to happen. Making the playoffs is not enough. They have become an unwatchable team the last couple months. Worst offense in the league since mid December. $7million/year Stasnty was a big reason for it.
They needed to switch something up, and Stastny was their best rental player.
How so? The Blues have been fading for the past couple of weeks and are on the edge of playoff position. Stastny is expensive and not worth his price tag and the Blues were able to get a first round pick from a division rival. A Blues fan favorite isn’t going to do anything if the team misses the playoffs, which seems likely.
Completely understand what everyone is saying, he was the easy trade to make. Just sad to see us give up on what looked like such a promising season, I wanted that trade to bring in a scorer. Paul never came back the guy we needed after his injury last year but eventually we have to just go for it and get expensive and not sell out. Tough to be a small market team fan
Yes it is very disappointing. And the scariest part is it seems to me (and many others) that it’s a lack of effort and/or mental toughness that is holding them back.
Would be hard for Statsny to bring back another scorer. Any team that would’ve considered trading for Statsny would’ve been a playoff team or a team fighting for a playoff spot, so its unlikely they would’ve moved a top six forward back to St. Louis. The Blues still could use a top six forward (like Hoffman) but they probably don’t want to pay the price that would come with him. After the haul that the Senators got for Brassard, I imagine Dorion is using that deal as a baseline for Hoffman. And Evander Kane would’ve been a terrible rental option for them given how they might not make the playoffs. If the team was in better playoff position, I think they make a deal to shore up their top six but their struggles of late got in the way of that.
Fan favorite might be a bit of a stretch, and the return was pretty good for losing a player, for a quarter of the year, whom we weren’t going to resign anyway. We got the same/better deal the Sabres got for Kane and Kane is Way better than Stats.
looking forward to see him play in a jets jersey
Solid trade for both teams.