No. 1 centers who are 26 years old and signed to term on a decent contract almost never become available on the trade market. So I don’t blame St. Louis one bit for asking for what sounds like a huge price.
Colleagues Darren Dreger and Chris Johnston reported Tuesday afternoon about the Buffalo Sabres’ keen interest in Thomas. Given Josh Norris’ struggles to stay healthy, this makes sense on a host of levels for the Sabres.
The Utah Mammoth are also among the teams in conversations with St. Louis on Thomas.
The question is whether the price will soften by 3 p.m. ET tomorrow or whether the Blues are happy to just keep Thomas and try out the market again come the offseason. They’ve acquired a lot of market knowledge on the interest in him.
What’s funny is that I got completely opposite reads on the Thomas situations from two team executives on Monday, one predicting Thomas for sure will get dealt by tomorrow’s deadline and the other predicting the Blues will wait until the summer to revisit that file.