Blues Claim Jack Finley Off Waivers From Lightning
There may be a trade freeze in the NHL right now but waiver wire moves can still be made. The Blues have added some young depth off the wire, as Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports (Twitter link) that they’ve claimed center Jack Finley off waivers from the Lightning. Under the rules for roster movement during the break, he won’t be required to report to St. Louis until February 17th.
The 23-year-old was a second-round pick by Tampa Bay back in 2020, going 57th overall. At the time, Finley wasn’t lighting it up in junior hockey with WHL Spokane but with a six-foot-six frame and an ability to play down the middle, the Lightning hoped that he’d eventually fill out and become a potential bottom-six option for them. He had 57 points in his draft year and then in 2021-22 (2020-21 was largely wiped out), he managed just 50 so the offensive outburst never came.
However, Finley showed some promising signs offensively in the minors. In his first three full professional seasons, he reached the double-digit goal mark in all three, ranging between 12 goals in his rookie year to 14 tallies last season, when he wound up with 28 points in 40 contests with AHL Syracuse. Given that, Tampa Bay was hesitant to cut him in training camp, instead keeping him around at the back of their roster.
Unfortunately for Finley, playing time was difficult to come by. He played in just 11 games over the first two months of the season, resulting in a three-game conditioning stint with the Crunch, where he had three points. Finley did play a bit more regularly after being recalled, seeing action in 12 games over the last seven-plus weeks but that was still minimal playing time overall. On the season, he has two goals and one assist in 23 outings while playing just 8:25 per game. He’s also chipped in 37 hits and has won 48.5% of his faceoffs.
Finley, a St. Louis native, now joins a team that looks to be heading for at least some sort of rebuild or retooling process with the team well out of playoff contention. Accordingly, he should have an easier pathway to consistent playing time down the stretch if the Blues sell off more veterans as they did with the Nick Bjugstad trade earlier this week; Finley effectively fills his spot on the roster.
While waiver claims are often on short-term deals, that isn’t the case here. Finley is in the first season of a three-year deal that currently carries a cap hit of $775K. As the league minimum increases next season, the AAV of the deal will go up to reflect the higher salary being paid. The final two seasons of the agreement are a one-way salary so St. Louis is potentially absorbing around $2MM in cash costs over the next three years. But if Finley is able to fill a depth role during that stretch, it’ll be a worthwhile pickup for them.
Photo courtesy of Russell LaBounty-Imagn Images.
Blues Trade Nick Bjugstad To Devils
The Devils acquired center Nick Bjugstad from the Blues in exchange for center Thomas Bordeleau and a conditional 2026 fourth-round pick, the teams announced. St. Louis will receive the latest of the three fourth-rounders that the Devils own (their own, the Stars’ and the Jets’), Frank Seravalli of Victory+ reports. New Jersey assigned forward Juho Lammikko to AHL Utica in the corresponding move, per a team announcement.
The move comes with less than an hour remaining until a league-wide trade moratorium that will last through the Olympic break. With only 12 days on the other side of the freeze before the trade deadline, it was widely speculated that there would be increased action this week. That hasn’t really happened outside of the Islanders’ back-to-back moves early last week, but New Jersey and St. Louis appear to have at least gotten the ball rolling on moves today.
This season has been a trying one for the 33-year-old Bjugstad. Injuries have been a theme throughout his 14-year NHL career, and an upper-body issue ended up sidelining him for nearly a month in December and January. He was also a semi-frequent healthy scratch for the stretch preceding his injury, leaving him with only 35 appearances on the year so far. He’s scored six goals but added only one assist for a 0.20 points per game rate, the worst of his career (min. 25 games).
The defensive aspects of Bjugstad’s game have been up to par, though. St. Louis has put its line combinations in a blender all year long due to injuries, but Bjugstad found success when centering the fourth line with Nathan Walker and Alexey Toropchenko. That trio controlled 54.2% of expected goals, per MoneyPuck, despite being given mostly defensive zone starts. He’s also had an uncharacteristically strong run in the faceoff dot, winning 51.1% of his draws. His career average is 49%.
With the Blues in the basement of the Western Conference, it’s no surprise that they’re willing to sell off tertiary pieces for futures – even if they’re not pending free agents. Bjugstad is still under contract through next season at a $1.75MM cap hit after signing a two-year, $3.5MM deal with St. Louis in free agency last summer.
The Devils aren’t in much better shape in the standings, though, making their willingness to add to their roster rather than subtract a tad perplexing at first glance. Their dwindling likelihood of a playoff berth this season is presumably why Bjugstad was attractive to them, though – he’ll be sticking around next season as a hopefully cost-effective fourth-line solution.
Center depth has been a problem in New Jersey this year, with Jack Hughes missing a significant chunk of games. That’s led them to be over-reliant on names like the injury-prone Cody Glass to succeed in top-nine roles, and they haven’t received much of any offense from their fourth line as a result. Their current group of Lammiko, Luke Glendening, and Maxim Tsyplakov has combined for just one goal all year long. Bjugstad won’t be a season-saver, but he’s a far more effective goal-scorer that low in the lineup than any of those names have proven to be this season.
Bordeleau, 24, was a second-round pick by the Sharks back in 2020 and was once viewed as a potential long-term piece. His development has stagnated over the past couple of seasons, though. After recording 38 points in 59 AHL games last season and not landing the NHL opportunities he’d hoped for in San Jose, he opted not to entertain offers from the Sharks as an RFA last summer and eventually had his signing rights traded to the Devils, inking a two-way deal a few weeks later.
Any trade value Bordeleau still had has been erased by a disastrous showing in Utica this season. In 35 minor-league appearances, he’s scored just two goals and eight points with a -13 rating. A pending restricted free agent, his inclusion is purely to leave the Devils with a bit of breathing room regarding the 50-contract limit – they’re currently at 49.
Lammikko doesn’t need waivers for today’s reassignment because he cleared them back on Jan. 17. While he wasn’t immediately reassigned to Utica then, the Devils had 30 days to do so before they would have needed to waive him a second time. Since he’s still in that window, they can make the demotion today without any obstacles. The 30-year-old has been limited to two assists and a -4 rating in 24 appearances for New Jersey, averaging 9:53 of ice time per game.
Podcaster and former NHLer Jordan Schmaltz was first to report the trade. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was first to report the return.
Three Players Placed On Unconditional Waivers
Feb. 4: All three cleared and are now unrestricted free agents, per Friedman. Larsson has already found his new home in Sweden with Leksands IF, Expressen reports.
Feb. 3: Three players from around the league won’t be back with their current clubs after the Olympic break. The Panthers’ Ryan McAllister, the Penguins’ Filip Larsson, and the Blues’ Samuel Johannesson were placed on unconditional waivers today for the purposes of contract terminations, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports.
McAllister, 24, will become an unrestricted free agent midway through a trying season. The Ontario native took a rare development path, inking his entry-level contract with Florida as an undrafted free agent in 2023 after just one season in college at Western Michigan. He’d erupted for 49 points in 39 games as a freshman, so making the jump to the pros wasn’t completely out of the blue.
The 5’10” pivot has never landed an NHL recall, but he’d put together some promising seasons in Charlotte – when healthy. He had 19 points in 37 games as a first-year pro in 2023-24 and averaged nearly a point per game last year, although he was available for only 16 games.
It seems whatever ailed him last year has made him a more limited threat this year. He had two goals and seven points with a -5 rating in 15 games to begin the year with Charlotte before the Panthers bumped him down to ECHL Savannah for the first time last month. He’s suited up twice, recording one assist and a -1 rating.
McAllister’s 0.64 points per game average in the AHL indicates he should be able to catch on somewhere else quickly, whether that’s on an AHL deal elsewhere to finish out the season or to join a pro team in Europe for the stretch run.
Larsson, 27, seems a sure bet to head back home to Sweden. He was a sixth-round pick by the Red Wings back in 2016 and had a one-year run with them in the AHL after coming out of college before being loaned back to Europe in 2020. He remained there until Detroit non-tendered him following the expiry of his entry-level deal.
Larsson later broke out as a top-tier starter in the Swedish Hockey League in 2023-24, racking up a .920 SV% and 1.93 GAA with five shutouts in 28 games. That put him back on the NHL radar, and the Penguins inked him to a two-year, two-way deal.
The Stockholm native was a good minor-league backup last season, notching a .910 SV% and 12-9-3 record in 26 showings for AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. He’s barely gotten any playing time this season behind youngsters Joel Blomqvist and Sergey Murashov, though, appearing just nine times. He hasn’t been terribly effective when dressed, either, throwing up a .876 SV% and 3.51 GAA.
Johannesson could also be on his way back to Sweden alongside Larsson. St. Louis signed the 25-year-old righty in 2024 out of Örebro HK. He was a 2020 draft pick by the Blue Jackets, but his exclusive signing rights with Columbus had expired.
The offensive-minded righty has been a valuable puck-mover for their minor-league affiliate in Springfield, but hasn’t shown the defensive utility necessary to earn a look at the next level. After putting up 32 points in 66 games last season, his output has dropped to 11 points in 26 games in 2025-26. He hasn’t been in Springfield’s lineup since mid-January, either, mostly due to his -20 rating.
Assessing The Blues’ Direction
The Blues are in a strange spot. They’re 31st in the league with a record of 20-26-9 and a goal differential of -54, tied for the worst in the NHL.
They’re very close to having the best odds to win the draft lottery, and while they aren’t technically out of the playoff hunt, they’re 10 points back of the Kings for the final Wild Card spot, and Los Angeles has games in hand. The Blues are likely finished for this season, and despite that, they haven’t fully committed to a rebuild, though they’re clearly not close to contending at the moment.
They have some good young players and a mix of veterans, some on bad contracts and others they probably want to trade, especially as the playoffs grow further away with each game.
St. Louis’ roster construction has been disjointed over the last few years with a mixed bag of moves. They’re far from alone in that regard. But what has been missing is a clear direction on how to sell to Blues fans, who are hoping for some signal that the team has a plan.
Entering the season, it looked as though the Blues were hoping to compete for a playoff spot, as they did last season. Those hopes have been dashed by inconsistent play and the struggles of core players Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Colton Parayko and Jordan Binnington. You either sell winning or you sell hope, and this season the Blues haven’t been able to sell either. That will need to change in short order, and a clear direction needs to be established.
Of the players listed above, Thomas is the only one who hasn’t been constantly linked to trade rumours this season, but that has changed as of late. Kyrou, Parayko and Binnington have all been fodder for trade board segments across the hockey media and have been joined by teammates Brayden Schenn and Justin Faulk.
In a perfect world, St. Louis would have a clear choice about who to move and who to keep. Still, some of the team’s previous moves have left them in a precarious spot, with their only real option being to retool rather than bottom out. They aren’t anywhere close to being a contender and already have several talented players and a very skilled coach in place.
Therein lies a big problem for the Blues. How do you tell Jim Montgomery that the team plans to sell off its veterans and go with younger players who are still finding their way in the NHL? It probably wouldn’t be popular with the veteran head coach.
The alternative is to continue pushing an aging roster into the playoffs and finishing in the middle of the standings, outside the postseason. Montgomery doesn’t need to look far to find a coach who was stuck in that spot for several seasons: Mike Sullivan, formerly of the Penguins.
Sullivan’s final three seasons with the team saw him try to will an aging lineup over the finish line, only to fall just outside the cut when it came to playoff time. Interestingly enough, Sullivan left the Penguins last summer to pursue a better opportunity with the Rangers, only to end up in the same position he had been in with Pittsburgh.
At the end of the day, for general manager Doug Armstrong, his job isn’t to please his coach; it’s to put together the best roster for the team he can and put the players in a position to win. Adding to an old, slow roster does nothing to accomplish that, and the Blues can’t make that the direction they go.
If there is anything we’ve learned in the last half-decade, it is that teams can remain competitive and retool on the fly by surrounding older talent with fresh legs and young energy, brought in by calling up skilled, speedy prospects. The Washington Capitals proved it last season; the Penguins are showing the same thing this year; and the Blues have to look at that model and see how best to apply it to their own roster construction.
The Blues have some pieces in Philip Broberg, Dylan Holloway, Jimmy Snuggerud, Jake Neighbours, and Dalibor Dvorsky. Now they need to figure out which veterans to keep around to guide them and which to let go to acquire more young talent to insulate the core.
It makes sense to move Binnington, given that Joel Hofer is waiting in the wings and probably deserves the bulk of the ice time. The issue for St. Louis is that they missed the best time to trade the 32-year-old: last March, before the trade deadline, or this past summer.
This year, Binnington’s game has fallen off a cliff, and he is dead last in the NHL with -24.4 goals saved above expected in 31 games (per MoneyPuck). Add to that the fact that he is counting $6MM against the salary cap and has a 14-team no-trade clause (per PuckPedia), and you have a player who is close to impossible to move.
Moving Faulk would also be a step in the right direction, as the 33-year-old makes $6.5MM this year and next and is having a reasonable offensive season with 11 goals and 13 assists in 52 games, while cleaning up the turnover issue that plagued him last year. The Blues are reportedly looking to strike while the iron is hot and are asking for a premium package to move the right-shot defenseman. If the Blues can move Faulk and get a return even remotely close to their ask, it would be good business and could set them on a path to retool sooner than later.
Outside of those two, Schenn, Thomas, and Parayko remain options to be moved, and it’s hard to say whether the Blues want to turn their roster over completely. The Penguins tried to move Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust, and Erik Karlsson last year but couldn’t find anyone willing to meet their asking price. Perhaps the Blues will chart a similar course and try to move those three veterans if they get the right price. If not, they’ll wait to see how their own roster shakes out over the next six to 12 months. In any event, St. Louis has to show direction sooner rather than later if it hopes to position the team for improvement in the near future.
Robert Thomas Undergoes Minor Leg Surgery
There are no expectations that Robert Thomas will return to the St. Louis Blues before the upcoming Olympic break. The Blues announced that Thomas had minor leg surgery yesterday and would return after the Olympics.
Although Thomas’s injury recovery won’t impact the Blues’ postseason outlook, it could have ramifications leading up to the trade deadline. While it was always unlikely, there was some speculation that St. Louis was entertaining trade offers on Thomas. Prospective buyers will likely shy away from the high price the Blues have set, given that Thomas would be only a few days removed from fully recovering by the deadline.
Blues Activate Pius Suter, Assign Matt Luff To AHL
It appears that the Blues will welcome back a veteran center to the lineup tonight against Columbus. The team announced that they have activated Pius Suter off injured reserve. In a corresponding move, winger Matt Luff has been assigned to AHL Springfield.
Suter is in his first season in St. Louis after signing a two-year, $8.25MM contract last summer on the heels on a breakout year in Vancouver. Last season, he had career highs in goals (25) and points (46) while holding down a top-six role for most of the year.
He hasn’t been called on to play as high in the lineup as often this season and his offensive numbers have suffered as a result. Through 37 games, Suter has seven goals and seven assists while averaging a little over 16 minutes per night. He had been sidelined for a little more than a month due to a right ankle injury.
As for Luff, his time on the roster was short-lived as he was recalled on an emergency basis just yesterday. He has been shuffled back and forth a few times this season and has gotten into five games with St. Louis where he has one goal and eight hits in a little over nine minutes per night of playing time. With the Thunderbirds, he has been quite productive, notching 13 goals and 20 assists in 33 games, meaning he’ll likely get another chance with the Blues before too long.
Blues Activate Oskar Sundqvist From Injured Reserve, Recall Matt Luff
1/30/26: The Blues once again recalled Luff from AHL Springfield under emergency conditions, restoring the recall they made, and then reversed, yesterday. The move fills the roster spot they opened when they reassigned Luff as part of the series of transactions they made that activated Sundqvist off of IR.
Luff has had a strong season so far, scoring 33 points in 33 games at the AHL level. That’s earned him the chance to dress for five NHL games, where he’s scored one goal and averaged 9:08 time on ice per game.
1/29/26: The Blues announced Thursday that they’ve activated center Oskar Sundqvist from injured reserve. As previously reported, St. Louis assigned wingers Matt Luff and Hugh McGing to AHL Springfield in the corresponding moves after recalling them under emergency conditions just this morning, leaving them with an open roster spot.
Whether or not Sundqvist enters the lineup tonight against the Panthers remains to be seen. He was labeled as a game-time decision this morning by head coach Jim Montgomery alongside top-six wingers Jordan Kyrou and Jake Neighbours (via NHL.com’s Lou Korac). Returning Luff and McGing to Springfield indicates the Blues have certainty that at least two of those names will be available. Considering Sundqvist has been a healthy scratch on a few occasions this season, though, he may still be outside of the lineup if all three are healthy.
The 31-year-old’s stay on IR was brief. He landed there last Friday and ended up missing four games with an ankle laceration that he sustained on Jan. 18 against the Oilers. With that, the healthy scratches and a lower-body injury that kept him on the shelf for the first couple of weeks of the season, Sundqvist has been limited to 39 out of 53 possible contests in 2025-26.
Now in his 11th NHL season and second stint with the Blues, Sundqvist remains an all-situations pivot who’s anchored the fourth line between Alexey Toropchenko and Nathan Walker for a decent portion of the campaign. He’s flexed into both the Blues’ second penalty-killing and power-play units when needed and is averaging 13:20 of ice time per game, right in line with his career average.
While he hasn’t been in the Blues’ lineup every night, he’s still been reasonably productive in his depth role for a St. Louis squad that struggles to score. He’s managed three goals and 10 assists for 13 points in 39 games, a pace of 0.33 per game that outmatches what he’s done in either of his last two seasons in Missouri. That’s despite him shooting at 9.4%, more than a full point below his career average.
Sundqvist’s -13 rating is uninspiring but not unexplainable. He starts 71.5% of his shifts at 5-on-5 in the defensive zone, one of the highest rates in the league among forwards.
Blues Place Dylan Holloway On Injured Reserve
3:00 p.m.: According to regional reporter Lou Korac, the Blues have already returned Luff and McGing to AHL Springfield from their emergency call-ups. Korac hinted that this likely means either Jordan Kyrou or Jake Neighbours would return to the lineup tonight.
10:30 a.m.: Dylan Holloway‘s return from a high ankle sprain will be short-lived. According to a team announcement, the St. Louis Blues have placed Holloway back on the injured reserve and recalled Matt Luff and Hugh McGing under emergency conditions.
After suffering a high ankle sprain in his right foot against the Chicago Blackhawks on December 12th, Holloway missed a month of action. He returned against the Edmonton Oilers on January 18th, but has missed the Blues’ last four games. Combined, since mid-December, Holloway has missed 19 games, and that absence is expected to grow.
Technically speaking, Holloway is eligible to return this upcoming Saturday against the Columbus Blue Jackets. However, given his injury struggles of late, it’s far likelier that St. Louis will hold him out through the Olympic break, giving him ample time to recover fully.
Regardless, it’s been a difficult follow-up campaign for Holloway’s breakout last season. In his first year with the Blues during the 2024-25 season, Holloway scored 26 goals and 63 points in 77 games, helping the team qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Due to the multiple injuries, Holloway has been limited to 34 appearances this year, registering eight goals and 17 points.
Meanwhile, St. Louis has recalled a pair of relatively older options from the AHL’s Springfield Thunderbirds to fill out the rest of their forward core as they conclude their four-game homestand. The pair have combined for eight games with the Blues this season, scoring two goals and three points.
In Springfield, however, the difference between the two is clear. Luff is leading the team in scoring by a healthy margin, putting up 13 goals and 33 points in 33 games. McGing, on the other hand, has provided more tertiary scoring, providing four goals and 12 points in 35 games.
Kyrou And Neighbours Listed As Day-To-Day
- The Blues announced (Twitter link) that wingers Jordan Kyrou (upper body) and Jake Neighbours (lower body) are listed as day-to-day after undergoing further evaluations on their respective injuries. Head coach Jim Montgomery was unsure if either player would be available for Thursday’s game against Florida. Both Kyrou and Neighbours left Tuesday’s loss to Dallas but it appears it’s the best-case scenario for both of them.
The NHL Is Ripe For A Big Change Of Scenery Trade
The classic change-of-scenery move was once standard in the NHL. Still, with the emergence of the salary cap, analytics, and entire departments dedicated to player projections, the number of big-name change-of-scenery trades has declined.
These deals were often made in hopes of inspiring two struggling players to return to their career averages or better. The most recent example of this kind of deal is the goalie trade between the Penguins and Oilers earlier this year, which involved Tristan Jarry and Stuart Skinner.
Another recent example came at last year’s trade deadline, when the Sabres sent Dylan Cozens and a draft pick to the Senators for Josh Norris and Jacob Bernard-Docker. This season, there are multiple change-of-scenery trade candidates, with the biggest names being forward Elias Pettersson of the Canucks and Andrei Svechnikov of the Hurricanes.
Don’t get it wrong. There are still plenty of change-of-scenery trades in the NHL involving fringe and depth players, and some don’t work out, but some do in a big way. Egor Chinakhov of the Penguins is a glaring example of a change-of-scenery move that has worked out thus far, as he is playing with more confidence and fire than he has in years.
In addition to the Chinakhov and Skinner moves, the Penguins have made several low-end versions of these trades this season, most recently this week’s deal with the Avalanche, which sent forward Valtteri Puustinen to the Avalanche in exchange for defenseman Ilya Solovyov. The trade barely made waves around the NHL, but it does provide an example of two players who need fresh starts being swapped by teams in the hope of reigniting their play.
Outside of the aforementioned Pettersson and Svechnikov, who are some other big-name players who could use a change of scenery? The big name has to be defenseman Dougie Hamilton of the Devils, who was a healthy scratch last week and hasn’t produced nearly the way you would hope from a $9MM offensive defenseman.
Hamilton has dealt with a couple of injury-riddled seasons and has just five goals and 12 assists in 46 games this year. While Hamilton’s play hasn’t been great this season, that hasn’t stopped the Devils from upping his usage from 19:51 a game last year to 21:33 this season.
Hamilton is still a good player and would be a likely candidate to bounce back in a new environment. But would any team want to take a gamble like that on a 32-year-old making $9MM annually over the next two and a half years?
There is interest, and why wouldn’t there be? Hamilton is a talented player who could very well thrive on a new team, but the Devils aren’t going to just give him a way or retain half his salary in exchange for peanuts. The best course of action for New Jersey might be to try to find a hockey deal for another player in need of a change.
Pivoting to the Western Conference, the Blues look to be going nowhere fast and have a few players who could use a fresh start, including forward Jordan Kyrou and defenseman Colton Parayko. Kyrou is probably the most intriguing name on this list, a 27-year-old with a healthy track record of success.
His decline this season (11 goals and 13 assists in 42 games) isn’t overly complicated. His shooting percentage has dropped almost a full six points from last year, and with it, so has his goal-scoring production. Kyrou has another five years on his contract after this season at an AAV of $8.13MM, and he could be a bargain depending on how motivated St. Louis is to shake things up.
The Blues are in no rush, though, and might hold firm on their asking price if they don’t get reasonable offers. From Kyrou’s perspective, this year has been one to forget offensively. However, many of his underlying numbers remain strong, and he should still be productive for the majority of his contract. The Blues have been a bad team this year, and without much support, Kyrou hasn’t been as effective as he was in years past, when he was a consistent 70-point threat.
Another Blues player who could use a new look is Parayko, who has been a mess this season after a good year last year. Parayko has never been an analytics darling, but some of his underlying numbers are ugly this season. Now, in fairness to the 32-year-old, he is being asked to shoulder a very heavy defensive load on a bad team that is going nowhere. It can’t be easy for the veteran to go in night after night knowing he’ll spend most of the game working in his own zone, but that is his reality in St. Louis. A fresh start in a less stressful role could be precisely what Parayko needs at this stage of his career, but he won’t come cheap, as St. Louis likely still views him as a premium asset.
Moving back east, the Devils paid a premium three years ago to acquire Timo Meier from the San Jose Sharks and hoped he would become a force in their top six as they entered their window of contention. Meier quickly signed a pricey extension with the Devils worth $8.8MM annually (on an eight-year deal), and it looked as though it was an excellent match for both sides.
Since joining New Jersey, Meier hasn’t been the same offensive contributor he was in San Jose, and some of his underlying numbers have taken a hit as well. Offensively, he is still a 50+ point player, but that likely isn’t what the Devils had hoped for when they made the moves to bring him in long-term. Meier just ended a six-game pointless drought the other night and has been dealing with personal matters on the side, taking a leave of absence last month to attend to a family health matter.
It’s hard to say whether he would welcome a move or not, but it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing for the 29-year-old or the team. Once again, the Devils aren’t going to give Meier away, as he remains an effective player, but given how rough the last 18 months have been for the team, it might not be the worst thing to shake up the roster by moving on from Meier, Hamilton, or perhaps both players.