It’s not every day that an NHL team suddenly becomes willing to trade their No. 1 center. Unless they find one in an upcoming draft, the Philadelphia Flyers might have to do things the hard way in order to find a No. 1 center of their own.
However, one aging team out west is facing a make-or-break season as it tries to stave off a rebuild. That’s the St. Louis Blues—a team that improved on its 2022-23 campaign, to be sure, but still failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second season in a row.
Drew Bannister, a first-time NHL head coach, guided the team to a 30-19-5 finish to finish the season after replacing Craig Berube midseason. The 50-year-old is now tasked with guiding one of the NHL’s oldest and slowest bluelines back to the Stanley Cup playoffs in hopes that the Blues can win another championship, just as they did in 2019.
Core players layers like former Flyers forward Brayden Schenn, Brandon Saad, Torey Krug, Jordan Binnington, Colton Parayko, and Justin Faulk aren’t getting any younger. If the Blues continue to sputter in second gear, it might be time to strip the team down to the studs and begin drafting some talented, new blood into the organization.
Players currently in their primes, such as Robert Thomas, Jordan Kyrou, and the recently extended Pavel Buchnevich, would bring in the assets that would allow the Blues to achieve that the fastest.
As for the Flyers, Thomas would clearly be of the most interest as a 25-year-old center coming off an 80-point season. Thomas is widely regarded as one of the NHL’s best and most underrated playmakers, having scored 77, 65, and 86 points, respectively, in his last three seasons.
To put the cherry on top, Thomas was also a member of St. Louis’s Stanley Cup-winning 2019 team.
Selected in the first round of the same draft, the 2017 draft, Thomas has developed into what the Flyers thought Morgan Frost could be. And if the Blues prove they truly cannot hang with the heavyweight titans of the Western Conference any longer, is there a reason to hang onto Thomas if a team like the Flyers comes knocking at their door with a massive trade package?
The Flyers have six picks in the first two rounds of the 2025 NHL Draft, and one would have to imagine that a package for Thomas would eat into most, if not all, of that stockpile. Thomas is heading into the third year of the eight-year, $65 million contract he signed with the Blues, which is coincidentally the beginning of the full no-trade clause he negotiated that lasts until 2030.
The key? St. Louis has missed the playoffs twice in a row since Thomas signed the contract on July 13, 2022.
Thomas carries an $8.125 million cap hit until 2031, so if it’s a question of winning, this is something both the player and the organization will have to be on the same page with in the future. As for the Flyers, if they can’t knock the Blues’ socks off with an offer to make such a deal worth considering, it wouldn’t really matter.
Rebuilds aren’t meant to be easy, and with Matvei Michkov arriving in Philadelphia imminently, the Flyers are starting to run out of time to address the multiple talent deficiencies across the rest of the NHL roster.
