{"id":429391,"date":"2026-01-26T19:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/429391\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T19:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:51:13","slug":"blues-overwhelming-trade-expectations-for-robert-thomas-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/429391\/","title":{"rendered":"Blues’ Overwhelming Trade Expectations for Robert Thomas Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"St.<\/a>
Despite the St. Louis Blues<\/a> listening to trade offers on just about anyone on the roster<\/a>, including star forwards like Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou, there are still a lot of people around the sport who would be shocked to see Thomas moved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Insider Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet<\/a> acknowledged this weekend that it would take an overwhelming offer to pry the 26-year-old two-way, playmaking center away from St. Louis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What it sounds like, if the Blues really wanted to do this \u2026 you make them say ‘there\u2019s no way we can say no’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So it is either a huge package that makes them say we can\u2019t say no to this or the other thing I have heard, is they\u2019re looking for like a stud top-six forward who\u2019s slightly younger than Thomas.<\/p>\n

Friedman went on to compare it to trading in a few-year-old model of your nice car for the same vehicle, but this year’s model.<\/p>\n

So there it is, a stud top-six forward (which is what Thomas already is) in return for another one who doesn’t have as many clicks on the odometer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The insider suggested the Blues would “probably be looking at somebody who is 22 to 24 years old”. Thomas will be 27 this summer.<\/p>\n

What does Thomas bring a receiving team in a trade?<\/p>\n

What would a team be trading for? He has five years remaining on his eight-year deal that carries a reasonable (for a player of his skill set) $8.125 million cap hit. A receiving team would be getting cap-friendly cost certainty on a creative, reliable, high-IQ center for another half a decade. Those don’t grow on trees. So be prepared to pay up handsomely, is the message.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas has been out since Jan. 15th with a lower-body injury and is set to be reassessed by the end of this week. He still leads the Blues in scoring this season, though his numbers are down a bit (probably reflective of the team’s overall poor performance this year).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 42 games, he has 33 points on 11 goals and 22 assists. He’s been good for over a point-per-game since becoming a full-time member of the Blues’ top-six five seasons ago.<\/p>\n

Photo: \u00a9 Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite the St. Louis Blues listening to trade offers on just about anyone on the roster, including star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,181,465,550,106,60,107,549,548,546,547],"class_list":{"0":"post-429391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-hockey-news","10":"tag-nhl-draft","11":"tag-nhl-free-agency","12":"tag-nhl-news","13":"tag-nhl-playoffs","14":"tag-nhl-rumors","15":"tag-nhl-teams","16":"tag-nhl-trade-deadline","17":"tag-nhl-trade-rumors","18":"tag-nhl-trades"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115963146055096796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}