ST. LOUIS — Of the 270 defensemen who have logged minutes in the NHL this season, the St. Louis Blues have used their top guys the most.
Colton Parayko ranks No. 11 in time on ice per game (24:45), followed by Justin Faulk (23:40) at No. 21 and Ryan Suter (22:43) at No. 38. No other team in the league has three defensemen in the top 38, and when you throw in Philip Broberg (21:03) at No. 73, it’s a lot of minutes on the main guys.
That’s why the Blues traded for veteran defenseman Cam Fowler from the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday. They received Fowler and a fourth-round pick in 2027 for defensive prospect Jeremie Biakabutuka and a second-round pick in 2027.
“When you look at our team right now, we’ve had four guys playing a lot of minutes most nights,” Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said. “I just felt that that wasn’t going to be sustainable moving forward. I say this with a smile on my face. We’re playing our top-four guys 25 minutes and one of them (Suter) is going to be 40 soon. So it just brings another quality player into our group with experience.”
Fowler, 33, who’s played all 991 games of his 15-year NHL career with Anaheim, is in the seventh year of an eight-year, $52 million deal ($6.5 million AAV). The Ducks are retaining 38.5 percent of his salary, so his cap hit with the Blues is $4 million.
The Blues were planning to have Fowler in their lineup Saturday night against the Dallas Stars, and coach Jim Montgomery said there was “a good chance” that he’d be in the top pair with Parayko. The left-shot defenseman has been playing in Anaheim’s top pair this season and logging the most ice time on the team (21:04), which ranks No. 71 in the league just ahead of Broberg.
“I think he can play certainly in our top four,” Armstrong said. “He’s played in the top four for a number of years. We have two guys that we rely heavily on on the right side in Parayko and Faulk. He can slide in and play with either of those two guys. I think it’s who he’s comfortable with.
“He can kill penalties, he can defend, he’s an excellent skater. He’s just a good pro. We’re not trying to make him better than he is. I just know he’s a good pro that can play top-four minutes and help our group and provide stability.”
Cam Fowler leaves the Ducks as their all-time leader in goals, assists and points by a defenseman.
We’re glad to have you in St. Louis, Cam. #stlblues pic.twitter.com/U66VanACYa
— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) December 14, 2024
The Blues found themselves in the market for a defenseman when they reached a crossroads with veteran Nick Leddy, who’s been out since mid-October with an undisclosed injury. He traveled with the team on its recent road trip through western Canada, but Montgomery said he was sent back to St. Louis early because the issue “flared up” again.
“His situation is up in the air,” Armstrong said. “I feel for Nick. He wants to be on the ice, but we’ve been day to day with that for the better part of two months. He takes a step forward, and it’s very positive and then something will happen and we’ll pull it back a little bit. There didn’t seem to be any defined timeline on this. I’m hoping he plays next week, but I can’t guarantee that.
“It’s difficult for Nick, but it’s also difficult for the coaches and players, so I just felt that it was the right time to support this group and add an experienced player that can help alleviate some of the ice time.”
Interestingly, Fowler’s $4 million cap hit matches Leddy’s cap hit exactly, and Fowler will be wearing a new number in St. Louis (No. 17) because Leddy wears the No. 4 that Fowler wore in Anaheim.
The Blues started talking several weeks ago about the possibility of bringing in a defenseman, and it culminated Saturday with the trade with the Ducks, who had been working with Fowler on finding a new team.
It might have come as a surprise that the Blues would be interested in another 30-something-year-old defenseman with a big contract and that they swapped a second-round pick for a fourth-rounder to do so. But Armstrong has been clear that he wants the Blues to be competitive while they retool, and he believes the trade for Fowler helps them accomplish that without affecting future plans.
“When we started this process of being competitive and building for the future, I look at Theo Lindstein, a first-round pick (in 2023) and then our two second-round picks last year (Colin Ralph and Lukas Fischer) … if the actuary tables are right, they should be making an impact in the league as players maybe in 2026, 2027,” Armstrong said. “So a trade like this doesn’t push anybody out or hold anybody back, or stunt anyone’s growth. It just seemed to be the proper time to do something for today and tomorrow.”
If Fowler can help them make the playoffs, then the trade worked, because the current roster will play in more meaningful games. They went into Saturday’s game in Dallas four points out of a wild-card spot in the Western Conference standings.
“I understand where we are in the standings and I understand where we are in our growth pattern,” Armstrong said. “But every big game that we play, every game that we’re in, it benefits Broberg, it benefits (Dylan) Holloway, it benefits (Jake) Neighbours, it benefits (Joel) Hofer, it benefits (Zack) Bolduc. We’re trying to stay competitive and give these guys the environment where they can grow and not rush our younger players, like a (Dalibor) Dvorsky, Lindstein, (Otto) Stenberg.
“They’re going to be ready three or four years after you draft them, and we’re a year and a half into that now. But again, we’re just trying to stay competitive and push. I understand people who say, ‘No, no, go right to the bottom (of the standings and pick high).’ But that’s not how we’re built, and that’s not something that we believe is good for our organization — seven, eight, nine years in the bottom of the league. That’s difficult and I think we can find a different way to do that.”
After adding Fowler for $4M, #stlblues have $2.6M cap space remaining in LTIRhttps://t.co/JgS5B9vEYE
— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) December 14, 2024
As far as the Blues giving up a second-round pick in the trade, Armstrong isn’t concerned about that either. If the Fowler deal doesn’t help the team make the postseason, there will be players on the current roster he can move at the March 7 trade deadline.
“We gave up a second-round pick, but we do get a fourth,” Armstrong said. “Depending (on) where we are in the standings, I think we can recoup a lot of these picks if we ever decide to. It shored up something that we needed. We gave up a second- and third-round pick for Broberg and Holloway because they fit into our age bracket.
“You look at our draft board this year, we don’t have a second or a third and people say, ‘Why is a rebuilding team doing this?’ But we also have Broberg and Holloway that I think I could acquire a second and a third relatively easily if I decided to go that route, which we won’t.”
So now the Blues have four defensemen who have combined to play 4,084 NHL games: Suter (1,474), Fowler (991), Faulk (930) and Parayko (689). If Fowler plays in the next Blues’ nine games, then No. 1,000 in his career will be against the Chicago Blackhawks in the Winter Classic at Wrigley Field.
“It just adds another player that’s played in this league for a long time and has been really good at it,” Montgomery said of Fowler. “You can never have enough good defensemen. The way we’ve been using our top four, with the minutes, to have someone else come in that’s going to eat a lot of those minutes as well.
“I think the more mature your team is, when you have guys that have won a lot of games because they’ve been in a lot of different situations, our ability to manage games better is the most prominent thing that I expect to see. Now we’ve got five guys back there. Leddy’s not there right now, but five guys that have played a lot of games in this league and won a lot of games.”
Armstrong added: “Then when Nick is ready, we’ll have (a more) experienced group back there.”
(Photo: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)
