BenFred: It's time to mentally prepare for a trade of Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly

“O’Reilly traded to Blues for three forwards, two draft picks,” read the headline at NHL.com.

When Blues general manager Doug Armstrong made the swap for Ryan O’Reilly back in July 2018, finalizing a deal that no matter how the captain’s tenure here ends is deserving of a spot on the short list of most impactful St. Louis sports acquisitions, that’s how the return package sent by the Blues to Buffalo was worded.

Considering what O’Reilly went on to do with and for the Blues, the cost was, for a long time, barely worth bringing up.

O’Reilly set a blue-collar example for a blue-collar team. Bruised and battered, he led the Blues’ surge to their first championship. He worked his way toward earning the captain title Vladimir Tarasenko assumed time on the team alone would secure. Entering this season, with O’Reilly on an expiring contract and approaching free agency, it was easy to demand the Blues extend him. Find the money. No matter what. I hollered about it plenty, and I had plenty of company. The emotional side of me would still love to see it happen. But as this Blues season continues to get late early, it’s time to bench the warm and fuzzies and turn toward the cold, hard reality of what it takes to expedite a retooling in a sport with a punishing salary cap.

A look back at the trade that sent O’Reilly from Buffalo to the Blues can help show why.

When a team that has never won a championship makes a deal for a player who goes on to help lead the charge to the promised land, winning hardware like the Conn Smythe and Selke trophies along the way, there is no questioning the trade. Period. That’s not what I’m suggesting here. What is clear now, though, is that a deal initially perceived to be a steal has balanced out quite a bit for Buffalo since then.

One of those forwards Buffalo picked up for O’Reilly was former Blues first-round pick Tage Thompson, who is now a rising NHL star. He has bloomed into a 30-plus goal scorer before he starts his age-26 season. One of the draft picks scored by Buffalo in the trade turned into Ryan Johnson, an impressive college defenseman at Minnesota who has not yet started his NHL career. The O’Reilly trade was not a heist. It has aged into a win-win for both teams.

Which helps illustrate why Armstrong must lean heavily toward trading O’Reilly before the March 3 trade deadline, along with every other pending free agent he either won’t or can’t squeeze beneath the salary cap in coming seasons. Seeking young NHL talent, promising prospects and desirable draft picks is the wise route after betting big on young forwards Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou to lead the next charge toward championship contention. The names secured at this deadline may not be recognizable or even known, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be seasons from now. If the ho-hum homestand that just wrapped up before the Blues hit the road again made one thing clear, it was the shortsightedness of prioritizing this team’s present over its future.

A present-day O’Reilly return won’t net close to what Buffalo secured last time around. He is a 31-year-old rental now, not a 27-year-old with five seasons left on his deal. He’s hurt, sidelined since late December with a broken foot, and still wearing a walking boot. He’s had a bad season, with what would be a career-worse minus-28 overshadowing his 10 goals and six assists. But if O’Reilly can get back on the ice in time, you can’t tell me postseason-bound teams that need a seasoned forward would not like to have him in their dressing room. O’Reilly, if healthy, is an intriguing X-factor for a team in need of been-there, done-that. Swirling trade rumors reflect it.

With Tarasenko, who has been hot and cold about wanting to be traded in the past, this should be rather painless. Get the best price, get his approval, and make the deal. It probably should have been done earlier. With O’Reilly, it’s easier in one way, because he has no no-trade clause, but harder in another, because he’s never once suggested he would rather be anywhere but here. That can’t cloud Armstrong’s vision, though. The silver lining of this stalled season is the young talent giving reasons to believe a better future awaits. Moves made before the deadline can build on that momentum.

Armstrong made a brilliant move trading for O’Reilly. The next right move could be moving him to help future versions of the Blues. And if the captain is dead set on returning on a deal that works for the Blues, he can always come back via free agency. Maybe a warm and fuzzy reunion could be possible, but now is the time for cold and hard reality.