Ding-Dong! The Jori Lehtera era is over in St. Louis

Two miracles happened for the St. Louis Blues on Friday night.

1. Jori Lehtera is no longer with the Blues.
2. The Blues actually got someone of value – Brayden Schenn – in exchange for Lehtera, the 27th overall pick and a conditional 2018 first-round pick.

Believe it or not, there was a team out there who willingly accepted Lehtera into their ranks. There must have been a lot of alcohol at the Philadelphia Flyers’ table at the draft.

The Lehtera era has officially ended in St. Louis and that’s a fact which should appease the vast majority of Blues fans. Carrying a cap hit of $4.7 million, Lehtera failed to live up to even half of his bloated salary last year with the Blues. Despite skating with Vladimir Tarasenko for most of the year, Lehtera managed just 22 points in 64 games and often looked like he was skating in quicksand. Most Blues fans could strap on some skates and find 22 points skating with Tarasenko.

The biggest issue with Lehtera may have been his contract which was a self-inflicted wound by GM Doug Armstrong. Lehtera didn’t deserve that type of cash even with the most optimistic of expectations. Realistically, he’s probably quite a bit better than he was in 2016-17, but he’s far from being worth a cap hit of $4.7 million.

Meanwhile, the Blues added Schenn who is a pretty exciting player. Schenn is under contract through 2019-20 and carries a $5.125 million cap hit. That’s a bit more expensive than Lehtera, but the Blues recently cleared some space when they lost David Perron to the Vegas Golden Knights. Offensively, Schenn is the far better player in the deal, scoring 25 goals in 2016-17 and 26 goals in 2015-16. Schenn is also the younger of the two players. He’ll turn 26 in August while Lehtera is already 29.

Blues fans were willing to give up Lehtera for a bag of pucks and even then that felt like a steal of a deal. Instead, the Blues were able to package Lehtera with some picks to get an asset who can actually help the Blues in a lot of ways. Fans may still be bummed Ryan Reaves has moved on (though that deal was sad, it’s a good one), but they should be excited as the Blues appear to be better today than they were before the draft.