The St. Louis Blues have re-signed winger Klim Kostin on a one-year deal worth $750K, per Bally Sports’ Andy Strickland.
Drafted 31st overall in 2017, Kostin hasn’t broken out offensively yet, but he hasn’t exactly been given the chance. In 40 games in 2021-22, Kostin had just four goals and nine points, but he was limited to playing just nine minutes a game. With David Perron departing the organization, though, Kostin has a shot to work his way into a top-nine role and therefore more ice time.
It’s a one-way contract for Kostin, the first of his NHL career. He’ll be a restricted free agent in 2023 once again.
Players like Kostin will be increasingly important for the Blues as extensions continue to get handed out to their young players. While the Blues have given out a lot of questionable cash this offseason, there’s absolutely no risk with this signing, a pleasant change of pace for Blues fans. With a full roster, per CapFriendly, the Blues are less than $1MM under the cap.
“Have given out A LOT of questionable cash this summer”….Other than Leddy, everyone signed for this year was at 1.2 million or under and all one year deals… What are you talking about? And leddy was asking for 5.5, and Blues only gave him 4 million per season which isn’t bad deal by any means. Only other thing could be the Thomas extension which doesn’t kick in until next season, and at 8mil per season it was a little rich when I first heard it, but he was over a point per game player at the age of 22 who has really rounded out his game as a center and was awesome on the penalty kill and had significant improvement on his faceoffs, and with finally utilizing his very underrated wrist shot. And after looking at other comparable young players and their contracts, like Suzuki who is at 8, Keller is 7.3ish, Norris is 7.8, Brady Tkachuk is over 8, Hughes is 8, Hirscher is over 7, Fiala is 7.8, etc, the contract looks just fine and when cap goes up significantly like it’s being projected to in 3 years, that contract might even become a steal soon. Thomas does so many things on the ice for Blues as a center, and centers usually get paid more. Now, with all that said, kyrou shouldn’t be getting 8, he should be around 6-7 per year if it’s long term deal, he’s very good offensively obviously, but he doesn’t do bring anything when it comes to an all-around game like Thomas does or pkay a premium position like center.
Yeah. Thomas is getting more than I’d want to pay for him, but no one can argue he fleeced the Blues in what guys like him are getting on the market.
For my part, I’m just tickled that they’re reupping so many of the Springfield Thunderbirds players who did so well for us this year.