The St. Louis Blues had the Chicago Blackhawks on the ropes last year, up two games to none in the first-round of the NHL playoffs yet still found themselves headed back home after only four more postseason contests.
It's become something of a theme for the Blues and head coach Ken Hitchcock in the past few years - strong regular seasons punctuated by ugly, short-lived playoff stints that seem to end sooner than they should.
The window of Stanley Cup opportunity for NHL teams doesn't often stay open long as aging veterans lose a step and young players who perform at or above expectation soon require heftier paychecks often beyond what the team that developed them can offer.
The Blues and GM Doug Armstrong - with young players like Vladimir Tarasenko, Jori Lehtera and Jaden Schwartz needing new deals in the not-too-distant future, creating a roster logjam and meaning tough decisions on several veterans looms on the horizon - are reportedly looking at this season as their last chance with the currently constructed roster to reach the Stanley Cup.
"They know they're getting to the point - and they want to do Tarasenko long term - so they know they're getting to the point where this group, they're going to have to break them up a little bit. This is potentially the last year of the window for this particular team. They are absolutely out to buy," said TSN's Elliotte Friedman on an episode of Calgary's Sportsnet 960, per NicholsOnHockey.com.
To that end, Friedman reports that he's hearing the Blues are among a group of teams looking to the Arizona Coyotes - confirmed sellers ahead of the NHL's March trade deadline - for a potential package deal of both center Antoine Vermette and defenseman Zbynek Michalek.
"There's no question - they're another team, I think, that was interested in doing Michalek and Vermette together. I couldn't get any confirmation out of Armstrong, but I do believe they're a group that's willing to do that," Friedman said.
"They saw Calgary twice this week on back-to-back nights in New York and New Jersey. That's no coincidence. They're there for a reason. They are trying to add."
Options abound on the NHL trade market at the moment, but with Michalek's value low due to a recent concussion and Coyotes GM Don Maloney operating under an ownership mandate to get younger and shed salary, a special opportunity may have presented itself for Armstrong to upgrade the St. Louis lineup and strengthen their current Stanley Cup prospects.
Any deal, of course, will weaken the team's talent base - either via losing elite prospects already in the system or top picks in the next couple of drafts - but if it brings an NHL championship to the franchise, you probably won't hear Blues fans complaining.
