St. Louis Blues: The Tenth Day Of Christmas

The St. Louis Blues have plenty of players that feel or felt like they had played with the team forever. Even so, a decade is a long time in professional sports and the team would be lucky to have a certain someone around for that long.

On the tenth day of Bluesmas, the blue note gave to me, ten years of Vlady (with a side of ten points for Lehtera). That’s right, a little bit of the bad mixed in with the good.

We’ll get that little blip over with quickly. Jori Lehtera is not a bad player by any stretch.

He is a big body with some decent talent. He is clearly capable of putting up 40 or more points since he has done it in his first NHL season.

The problem becomes his lack of consistency and a propensity to always pass even when the pass is not there. Those negatives make him unlikely – especially combined with his age – to ever become a real number one center.

The issue there is the Blues seem to always want to make him their top center since he is usually joined at the hip with Vladimir Tarasenko. Tarasenko might not be considered in the upper echelon by national media, but he’s a superstar, make no mistake.

If Lehtera is constantly playing with a 40 goal scorer, you would think he could pick up more than his fair share of points. After a 44 point “rookie” season, he dropped 10 points last year and only has 10 points through over 1/3 of the season this year.

Number one centers don’t grow on trees. That makes the fans’ clamoring to get one about as easy as finding someone who would satiate Cardinals’ fans need for a power hitter that doesn’t strike out a lot in today’s game. They exist, but acquiring them is difficult.

Even so, you just wonder how good Tarasenko could be if he had his own version of Adam Oates instead of Jochen Hecht.

Switching the focus to 91 and the focus to a more fun topic, the Blues have a fantastic chance to have one of the league’s leading scorers on their team for a decade. Even with the over-inflated contracts given out, that is almost unheard of in today’s sports landscape.

Usually someone gets the contract when they are already too old, so their production takes a big hit in the second half of the deal. Either that or it was a desperate grab by the team and the player ends up wanting out somewhere in the middle.

None of that seems likely at this point in time for Tarasenko. By the end of his current contract, he will only be 32.

At that age, he would still be young enough (if healthy) to have another deal of three or four years. Additionally, the Blues ownership seems committed to winning and unlikely to have another blip caused by the selloff of the team back when Bill Laurie put the team for sale.

It should be noted that, technically, Tarasenko would be in his 11th NHL season when his contract expires. However, it would be his tenth full year since he only played 38 games in his first, so for the purposes of this article, we’ll stick to the idea of a decade of the Tank.

As I mentioned, not only would this be good just because he’s a good player, but he still has a chance to be great (if he is not already). We do need him to step it up a bit in the playoffs, but he keeps improving every year. He is poised to do so again.

Tarasenko’s point and goal totals have increased every season. If he keeps his current pace, he is on a pace to have 89 points. His goal scoring pace is slightly off, but we aren’t mathematically halfway through the season yet and he has 16 goals, which isn’t too far off from half of his 40 from last season.

Circling back to the original point, you wonder how much his totals could be improved if he had a true number one centerman with him. There is plenty to be said for the chemistry that Lehtera and Tarasenko have and their friendship. Even so, at his peak, Lehtera just isn’t the quality set-up man that you need centering your top scorer.

People will hate on him forever due to his contract, but I’d still like to see a longer run together with Tarasenko and Paul Stastny. Regardless of that, the Blues need to find an upgrade.

The Blues had a decade of Brett Hull. He played with guys like Oates, Craig Janney, Brian Sutter and Bernie Federko. The team still won nothing. You don’t want to waste all Tarasenko’s chances by not giving him that kind of talent as well.

There’s never any guarantees in sports. Picking up a top center might not help. Tarasenko might not stick around the length of his deal.

If he did and the Blues did have a top center, I’d take our chances though. At least, for now, it is comforting to know we have one of the league’s premier scorers locked up for a good, long while.