Trade or Draft: What Every 2024 NHL Lottery Team Should Do | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors
16. St. Louis Blues
16 of 16
The decision: Shop the pick, maybe move back
In some ways the St. Louis Blues are in the worst possible position a professional sports team can be in: Everything about them at this point is just...average.
They have an average roster that finished with an average record, resulting in a middle-of-the-pack draft pick, with an average farm system sitting behind all of it.
Not good enough to seriously compete. Not bad enough to get a top pick to change the franchise. Not hopeless enough to start a full-scale rebuild.
That is a brutal cycle to try to break out of. There is no one trade here that is going to to change the short-term future, and the No. 16 pick is likely to just add more middle-of-the-pack talent.
The optimal play here might be to try to shop the pick to move back and accumulate more selections to take more swings.
