{"id":89248,"date":"2025-08-17T10:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T10:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89248\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T10:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T10:01:09","slug":"nick-bjugstad-could-leave-a-great-first-impression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89248\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Bjugstad could leave a great first impression"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret here at Bleedin’ Blue: we’re fans of Nick Bjugstad’s game<\/a>. While he’s on the older side at 33 years old, he should still be an effective bottom-six option for the St. Louis Blues, whether that’s at center or as either a left or right winger. A big body with some scoring ability, Bjugstad is an NHL general manager’s dream third or fourth-line player.<\/p>\n

Of course, Bjugstad’s usage will play a major part in his success. For all his positives, putting Bjugstad in an elevated role in a team’s top-six forward group for extended periods of time is a risk; his career average time on ice is 14:46<\/a>, right in line with a third liner, and last year his average ice time with the Utah Mammoth was 12:19. He was effective in those minutes, though, potting eight goals and 19 points through 66 games.<\/p>\n

First season expectations<\/p>\n

That’s about what we should expect from Bjugstad during his first season with the Blues: a veteran, depth role player who can give you a handful of goals, whose positional versatility is one of their strongest assets. At his age, health may be a concern–he hasn’t played a full 82 games since he was 25, back in the 2017-18 season–but the Blues have sufficient depth to step up should Bjugstad go down with injury.<\/p>\n

For his first year with the team, we’d like to see Bjugstad score a bit more than he did last season. That shouldn’t be an issue, considering the Blues have a more established roster than the Mammoth, which was quite a young team going through growing pains in a new city in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

A 10-goal, 25-point season seems well within reach for Bjugstad if he can remain healthy. Alongside potentially the best fourth-line in hockey with Alexey Toropchenko and Mathieu Joseph, this trio could be a difference maker. Even with their limited minutes, watch out for that line. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s no secret here at Bleedin’ Blue: we’re fans of Nick Bjugstad’s game. While he’s on the older…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-89248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}