While it appears the Edmonton Oilers high-jacked David Perron from the St. Louis Blues when they traded for him this summer, offering up a much-lesser Magnus Paajarvi and a second-round pick, the Blues only moved Perron because they needed lots of money to sign Pietrangelo and have the dough to also pursue centres Val Filppula, Stephen Weiss or Derek Roy as free-agents.
The move was absolutely a salary dump by the Blues.
Perron has been outstanding here — his yappiness and greasiness reminds me of Esa Tikkanen, although you can understand Perron’s verbiage better.
But Paajarvi, according to Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock “over time he has the chance to be a top six forward” on his team.
Hitchcock is a fan, with only an extremely painful upper-body injury (not a shoulder) after a wallop into the boards Oct. 26 against Nashville setting Paajarvi back. He’s got two goals in 12 games.
“The surprising thing for us is his offensive instincts. He’s bought into the hunt of the puck and he and (Patrik) Berglund are good together,” said Hitchcock.
“He does more things off the rush right now than a lot of our players. It would be really interesting to see his numbers if he hadn’t got hurt.”
