STL fan in MN wrote: ↑02 Aug 2026 15:08 pm
Good video from the Blues there.
The first kid they’re talking about is clearly Cullen. Army wants to throw out and not consider the results from the blowout win the US team had over Sweden at the U18s. Cullen scored 3 of his 9 pts from the tourney in that game. Walt doesn’t want to throw it out and clearly Feltrin was a big believer in him too. Army seemed unconvinced but he also said he’d only seen this player a few times so to me, he was just doing what a manager should do - question his staff to back up their opinions. He asked a good question as to why Cullen moved up the rankings so much later in the season. Not sure if they were trying to edit it in a way to make it sound like they were talking about Lawrence but they were clearly talking about Cullen.
Feltrin then says an interesting line - “he’s a filler.” To which Miller responds, “Is that the only reason he’s on the list? Just to take up a spot?” Feltrin responds that it can’t be denied this player has skilled. He’s not a perfect player or they’d be talking top-5 with him (and clearly they’re not). It’s unclear to me what player they’re talking about there. Could still be part of the Cullen discussion, maybe they had moved onto Lawrence or maybe it was another player entirely.
When they start the Day 2 discussions, clearly they’re taking about Lawrence now.
When Feltrin asks, “would you take him in the 1st round?” and MacLennan responds “absolutely.”, I bet he’s talking about Dagenais. They go on to talk about how some mock has him at 28 but they have him ranked at 14. I appreciate both the guys that stood by their assessment of Dagenais as well as those that pushed to make sure they didn’t have him ranked too high.
Then later on in the video when they’re on the clock for pick 16, Army then presses again to make sure Dagenais was their guy. The scouts held firm he was their guy.
There was then a quick clip of Army getting off the phone and then he tells the group, “they’re picking so we’re picking.” This tells me he tried to move back a few spots and still get Dagenais but the other team said no so he was like, ok fine, we’ll just pick him at 16. But good attempt to at least try to move down, likely still get the guy they wanted and would’ve gotten another asset on top of it.
Army spoke of how they “jumped their list” last year due to the acquisition of Mailloux. I interpret this as they didn’t take the guy that had at the top of their board because that player was a d-man and they had just gotten Mailloux. The d-men picked a bit after Carbonneau were Cam Reid, Logan Hensler, Sasha Boumedienne and Henry Brzustewicz. Considering Mailloux’s a righty, I’d guess he’s most likely referring to either Hensler or Brzustewicz. Interesting they would deviate from their list like that though based on acquiring Mailloux. But Army has previously said they did the same thing in 2023. A forward was at the top of the list at 29 but they had already taken 2 forwards so they went with the next guy on the list instead - Lindstein.
Sounds like they had a lot of interest in moving up from 29 but then once the option to get McTavish presented itself, the group seemed on board with making that move. Obviously that room was pretty much all scouting guys and scouts love to make picks but it made sense.
When Walt said, “we’re going to get Lawrence at 11. I guarantee it.” this tells me he’s a guy that understood that based on where the Blues were leading that day with where they had Lawrence ranked on their list, that he was pretty much guaranteed to be the top guy left on their list once it got to pick 11. And he was also confident Lawrence would still be there at 11, which showed he was well aware of the market shifts late and that Lawrence was dropping.
Feltrin is very stoic so hard to read but he didn’t seem super excited when they ended up with Lawrence. Based on all sorts of parts of this video, I think he really wanted Cullen.
They clearly were set on Dagenais though as the offer from NJ was way in the Blues favor from a value standpoint. 12 and 35 for 15 and 29?? It tells me the didn’t really value anyone else higher than Dagenais in that range so there wasn’t the value for them to move from 15 to 12 whereas normally that would be a big value and moving from 29 to 35 would be a very small price to pay for that value.
Funny Army got Verbeek to tell him “his guy”, ie. pretty much the most protected secret these guys have. But it made sense. There was only 1 pick left before pick 15 so if Verbeek’s target was the same as Army’s there would be no deal so he might as well tell Army so they can start getting their ducks in a row. Verbeek told him the target was Klepov and then Army knew they’d have a deal as long as Klepov didn’t get picked at 14. He did the same with Yzerman in 2023 - getting Yzerman to tell him they were going to take Danielson at 9 which told Army one of his two targets (Leonard and Dvorsky) would still be there at 10 so a pending deal he had with Buffalo to move back to 13 would be a no. This allowed him to be able to give Buffalo the curtesy of telling them the deal wasn’t going to have a little sooner. Army clearly built a ton of trust around the league for other GMs to trust him like that.
