What could the Kevin Hayes salary dump mean for the Blues’ future moves?

LAS VEGAS — Doug Armstrong has been given a lot of credit for his honesty during the St. Louis Blues’ retool, and another example of it came Saturday.

Granted, the general manager was admitting his own mistake. A year ago, he acquired veteran center Kevin Hayes from the Philadelphia Flyers for a 2024 sixth-round draft pick, and Saturday, he traded Hayes and a 2025 second-round pick to the Pittsburgh Penguins for future considerations.

In fact, when the deal was announced on the morning of Day 2 of the NHL Draft, the Flyers had yet to even make the pick the Blues sent them for Hayes.

“When you put it down on paper, it wasn’t a shining moment for myself,” Armstrong said.

But if the Blues want to be shining anytime soon, it’s going to take continued accountability and moves like this.

Bringing in Hayes made some sense at the time. The club needed a center, and with a locker room that was lacking chemistry, adding an affable veteran presence was also viewed as a plus. The Flyers were retaining 50 percent of Hayes’ $7.1 million cap hit, so the Blues were only on the hook for $3.6 million.

Hayes, however, just wasn’t the player who could help. The 32-year-old chipped in with 13 goals and 29 points and had the team’s best winning percentage on faceoffs (57 percent). But showing declining speed, he was a healthy scratch for a team battling for a playoff spot at the end of the season.

So, staring at the two years left on his contract, Armstrong cut his losses.

“This is just a situation where it wasn’t working,” Armstrong said. “I made a decision a year ago that I thought it could work for three years, and as the year progressed, it didn’t look like it was working for either side.

“I just felt the way we’re looking moving forward, if we want to put younger guys in there, I didn’t see a path for him to regain his footing. When it’s not working on the ice for him and for us, it just felt like it was the proper time.”

Armstrong also acknowledged another factor in the decision: It was a salary dump.

The Blues have shed Hayes’ $3.6 million cap hit for the next two seasons. His actual salary dollars would’ve been $5.25 million each year for a total of $10.5 million, and with the Flyers retaining 50 percent of that, the club saved $5.25 million in real-dollar value.

“It gives us an opportunity, whether it’s this year or next year, to use cap space or at worst save $6 million,” Armstrong said.

According to PuckPedia, the Blues have $71.7 million committed to 18 players, leaving them approximately $16.3 million under the NHL’s $88 million next season.

They may not spend to the cap during the retool, so the Hayes trade wasn’t something that had to happen to make room for another player — again, it was more about the fit — but every bit helps when making the next move for the future.

Such as Pavel Buchnevich.

Armstrong confirmed The Athletic’s report Friday that the Blues and Buchnevich’s camp have been talking, and the GM even took it a step further.

“Yeah, we’ve had very good conversations,” he said. “We’re going to talk again in July. I can’t handicap it. It wasn’t like we were talking apples to oranges. It’s just getting a comfort level for both sides now. The hardest part is always the last little bit.”

The last little bit?

That sounds like the Blues and Buchnevich are at least thinking along the same lines. The reference to “July” is because July 1 (Monday) is the first day that players with one year remaining on their existing contracts, like Buchnevich, are eligible to sign an extension.

The challenge of ironing out an extension for Buchnevich has been the term, according to team and league sources. But judging by Armstrong’s comments Saturday, that may not be as big of an issue in his mind as it was previously.

“He’s been here three years,” Armstrong said. “He’s been a point-per-game player — one of our top three scorers — for three years, and he’s 29, going to be 30. He’s probably got at least, after (the 2024-25 season), four really strong years left. Then it’s like all these free agents — it’s the ‘out’ money. But that’s the price of doing business.”

Speaking of that price: As mentioned, free agency opens Monday.

The Blues will be monitoring the market but don’t plan to be major players.

“I never say never on anything, but you’re realistic, too,” Armstrong said. “We’re going to be understanding of where we’re at. I liked the way (Zack) Bolduc played last year. I liked Dean, and I do want to give them opportunities. We’ll see how we can augment that group.

“I think you have to consider everything, but we have acquired these assets and we have younger players coming. We have to look at the whole landscape on how to improve our team.”

Having the additional cap space, Armstrong said, can also help the Blues in ways he can’t anticipate.

“You never know what other teams are going to do,” he said. “You saw a team like Tampa Bay make changes (trading Mikhail Sergachev and Tanner Jeannot) that I don’t think a lot of people saw coming. There might be other people that want to move money, and we have assets. So we have the ability now to talk to teams about things that maybe we didn’t before, and we also have the ability to see how everybody reacts on July 1.”

Despite Hayes’ departure, the Blues aren’t necessarily looking for a third-line center, but they could be eventually.

Prospect Dalibor Dvorsky, a center, was the team’s first-round pick (No. 10) in the 2023 NHL Draft and will be in training camp with a chance to make the team. In addition, Armstrong said that Buchnevich could be penciled in as the second-line center and Brayden Schenn as the third-line center. Newcomer Alexandre Texier, who was acquired in a trade with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday, was a center earlier in his career but is expected to play on the wing.

If the Blues decide to find a center from outside the organization, Armstrong said it shouldn’t be a problem.

“We have an opportunity to see what’s available over the next couple of months via trade,” he said. “We have some opportunity to do some things, and we’ll explore it.”

But for now, fans will have to wait. That goes for the defense, too. Will Torey Krug be moved? Justin Faulk?

“They’re all under contract,” Armstrong said. “We’re just going to wait and see how it goes in July and August. That’s all I can really say.”

As for the draft, Armstrong liked his haul. The Blues took defenseman Adam Jiricek with the No. 16 pick and made nine selections in all. They picked Jiricek, defenseman Colin Ralph (No. 48), defenseman Lukas Fischer (No. 56), left winger Ondrej Kos (No. 81), center Adam Jecho (No. 95), center Tomas Mrsic (No. 113), defenseman William McIsaac (No. 145), center Antoine Dorion (No. 209) and center Matvei Korotky (No. 211).

“I do believe that we took the best player available for us at that time — they just happened to be defense,” Armstrong said. “It was a defense-heavy draft, and we were able to find players that our guys liked. They’re bigger bodies. It’s amazing how tall they are and how lean they are. So there’s a lot of muscle mass needed for these young men, but we’re excited to have that style of player.

“We have some players here, and now it’s just giving them some time to grow with us.”

(Photo: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)