The St. Louis Blues are taking a huge gamble on Jordan Binnington.
There was a surprise trade in the NHL last week, when it was announced that the St. Louis Blues traded goaltender Jake Allen along with a 2022 seventh round pick to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for a third and seventh round pick at the 2020 draft.
While it is an interesting trade for the Canadiens, given that they will now have almost $15 million committed to their two goalies next season, they have been wanting to have a solid backup for Carey Price for quite some time now and appear to have done so.
For the Blues however, it is even more of an eyebrow raising move. While it was obvious that Jordan Binnington was the teams starting netminder, this trade makes it clear they are all in on him. Despite his great run last season that resulted in a Stanley Cup Championship, this is still an extremely risky move for multiple reasons.
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Small Sample Size
Sure, as just previously mentioned, Binnington did play a huge role in the Blues winning their first ever Stanley Cup.
However, he appeared in only 32 regular season games during the 2018-19 season, and an additional 26 in the 2019 playoffs. Prior to that, he had only appeared in one NHL game, which came during the 2015-16 season.
While his 2018-19 regular seasons numbers of a 1.89 goals against average (GAA) and a .927% save percentage (SV%) were incredible, they fell off quite dramatically this regular season.
Binnington posted a pedestrian 2.56 GAA along with a .912 SV%. The drop off in this years postseason was even more dramatic, as he posted a putrid 4.72 GAA and a .851 SV%. As a result, the Blues ended up turning to Allen for part of their series against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Late Bloomer
While goalies are known to take longer to develop than other players, it is still fairly surprising that Binnington was a 26-year-old rookie. Coming on to the scene as hot as he did, it would make sense that many assumed he was a young, top end prospect. However, that was far from the case.
In fact, it could be argued that he was even somewhat of a journeyman netminder prior to last season, having played in 204 combined games in the AHL and ECHL with five different teams. While it is possible he was just a late bloomer or even over developed, it also makes you question if he was maybe not considered an NHL goaltender and happened to go on a hot run in 2019.
Comparable Career
One former player that seems to really compare to Binnington is longtime Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Cam Ward. Like Binnington, Ward led his team to a Stanley Cup Championship during his rookie season, although he was years younger.
While Ward was a much higher end prospect as he was taken in the first round of the 2002 draft, the run he went on during the 2006 playoffs surprised everyone and had many thinking he was a superstar in the making.
While Ward did go on to play over 700 games in his career, he never turned into the dominating goalie everyone had imagined. Instead, he was often an average to below average starting goaltender around the league, and ended his career with a 2.74 GAA and a .908 SV%. Safe to say, the Blues will be hoping Binnington is able to post better numbers than that.
Wait and See
Of course, there will be some who read this and disagree completely, thinking Binnington is more than capable of what is being thrown his way. After all, he was able to handle any and all adversity thrown his way during the 2019 playoffs, seeming to be unfazed through it all. Maybe this season was simply just an off year and he will turn it all around. Time will tell on that, but there is no question that the management is putting a lot of trust into him.
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