St. Louis Blues Cap Space: Examining the Blues' salary in the off-season

The St. Louis Blues, like most playoff teams, didn't have much cap space so had a quiet off-season to start.

The Blues currently have $2,360,238 in cap space which should allow them to sign a player or two if they choose to. However, St. Louis still needs to re-sign RFA Alexey Toropchenko, which won't cost much.

Outside of that move, St. Louis is running back a very similar team to what they had last year.

The St. Louis Blues' off-season moves

St. Louis' first big move of the off-season was acquiring Kevin Hayes from the Philadelphia Flyers in a trade. Philadelphia retained 50 percent of his salary, which sweetened the deal significantly. Hayes was not well-liked by John Tortorella, but the Blues were very happy to get him.

St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong spoke to reporters (via NHL.com):

"We're trying to add players to our group and keep as many assets as we can. He's sort of on the vein of getting Kapanen or Vrana, another good NHL player who plays in our top nine. Contract fits into our structure. Timeline fits into our structure...

"We said at one point we wanted to add one more player into our top nine. If you take that group and you put a slash with Neighbours and Blais. That means if you delete one of those two top nines, if you believe both are, you have 10. If you delete either or, we have eight or nine. We're excited. We think we've rounded out our forward group."

Outside of trading for Kevin Hayes, the Blues added some depth players. They signed forward Mackenzie MacEachern to a two-year, one-way contract. Then they announced the signings of defensemen Joshua Jacobs and Wyatt Kalynuk, along with goaltender Malcolm Subban to one-year, two-way contracts.

The St. Louis Blues also re-signed Tyler Tucker to a two-year deal, who will be a third-pair defenseman or a healthy scratch.

The only other move St. Louis has to make is to sign a backup goaltender, if Malcolm Subban doesn't win the role. But, with nearly $3 million in cap space, the Blues have enough to get a true backup goaltender in the NHL.

Ultimately, with very limited cap space, the St. Louis Blues have had a quiet off-season, as Armstrong is hoping their young players take a step forward in 2023.