{"id":770834,"date":"2026-06-30T22:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T22:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/770834\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T22:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T22:48:08","slug":"steen-takes-over-as-blues-gm-on-eve-of-nhl-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/770834\/","title":{"rendered":"Steen takes over as Blues GM on eve of NHL free agency\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. LOUIS &#8212; Alexander\u00a0Steen officially started his tenure as St. Louis Blues general manager on Tuesday, and his main priority is to get them back in the Stanley Cup Playoffs on a consistent basis.<\/p>\n<p>Steen replaces Doug Armstrong, who held the position for 16 years and remains president of hockey operations, with NHL free agency beginning at noon ET Wednesday. The Blues (37-33-12) finished four points behind the Los Angeles Kings for the second wild card in the Western Conference and missed the playoffs for the third time in four seasons. In the past week, they\u2019ve acquired forward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/mason-mctavish-8482745\" title=\"Mason McTavish\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mason McTavish<\/a> from the Anaheim Ducks, forward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/connor-mcmichael-8481580\" title=\"Connor McMichael\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Connor McMichael<\/a>\u00a0from the Washington Capitals and defenseman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/brandon-carlo-8478443\" title=\"Brandon Carlo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Brandon Carlo<\/a> from the Toronto Maple Leafs in separate trades.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(Free agency) opens tomorrow and everybody\u2019s a little antsy, but it\u2019s a longer time frame,\u201d Steen said. \u201cWe are happy with where we\u2019re at, where we\u2019re positioned. We like our team, but our management group\u2019s high on that internal competition and if something presents itself, we\u2019ll look at it and act accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/robert-thomas-8480023\" title=\"Robert Thomas\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Thomas<\/a> was in attendance for Steen\u2019s press conference Tuesday and said he\u2019s excited by the recent acquisitions. Thomas, the team\u2019s No. 1 center, was limited to 64 games this season but led the Blues in goals (25), assists (39), points (64) and plus\/minus (plus-22). He turns 27 on Thursday and is signed through the 2030-31 season ($8.125 million average annual value).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom my standpoint, I&#8217;ve loved my time in St. Louis,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cI love it here, I love the organization, the city. These last couple years have been tough. We want to be really competitive every year, and we&#8217;ve only had one full year of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo (get) some high-end young pieces that can really fill in our team, it gives our team excitement and especially the confidence that we&#8217;re going to be competitive soon. Also, it gives me a lot of responsibility; I&#8217;m coming into the prime years of my career now, (and) I want to have success here and a really successful team. Whether that&#8217;s stepping up in my leadership and my play, all those are aspects of the game and puts that accountability on me, so I&#8217;m really excited.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steen said, \u201cIt takes a village. We have great collaboration between all of our departments and our management group on decisions we want to make and how we weigh them and discuss them and are open to suggestions. \u2026 Doug and I have the same view of our plan and kind of work for what\u2019s best for the St. Louis Blues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS &#8212; Alexander\u00a0Steen officially started his tenure as St. Louis Blues general manager on Tuesday, and his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-770834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}