Joel Hofer’s breakout season has changed the conversation in St. Louis. What looked like a goaltending tandem a year ago now looks a lot more like the Blues have found their guy.
In 46 games, with 43 starts, the Winnipeg native went 24-13-5 and put up a .909 save percentage and a 2.61 goals-against average. He also finished second in the NHL with six shutouts, a strong enough run to take over the starting job while Jordan Binnington struggled. After years of being the backup, Hofer seized the opening and made it his own.
That’s why the next contract matters so much.
The Blues do have control beyond this season. Hofer is still under team control as a restricted free agent for one more summer before he would reach unrestricted free agency in 2028.
On paper, that gives general manager Alexander Steen some time. In reality, the market may not cooperate.
This summer already showed how quickly teams are willing to push for young talent. On July 1, the New Jersey Devils tendered an offer sheet to Barrett Hayton of the Utah Mammoth.
Two days later, the Philadelphia Flyers did the same with Leo Carlsson of the Anaheim Ducks. Both teams matched, and the Ducks wound up making Carlsson the league’s highest-paid player.
The lesson is pretty clear: with the cap climbing, more clubs are willing to take a swing if they think the player is worth the draft-pick price. The Blues, after all, helped kick that door open with Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg in 2024.
That puts Hofer in a tricky spot for St. Louis.
Young, promising goaltender? That’s exactly the kind of player another team could target.
And if the Blues somehow lost him, while Binnington remains a pending UFA and a name that’s already circulating in trade rumors, the organization could suddenly be staring at a much bigger reset in net.
So yes, Hofer needs a deal.
A short-term bridge isn’t impossible, but it doesn’t feel like the cleanest path anymore. Hofer already signed a two-year bridge contract in the summer of 2025, a move that protected him from an offer sheet and bought the Blues more time.
It worked. He has now shown enough to look like the permanent starter.
Still, if St. Louis wanted one more look, it could let this season do the work.
Hofer is already under contract, so the team can evaluate him again and decide later whether to go long. If Steen wanted to keep things brief, a one-year contract would be the most logical way to guard against an offer sheet during Hofer’s final RFA summer.
Even that feels like a reach.
The smarter bet is the long-term play.
A five-year deal fits the situation best, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen offers a useful comparison. Buffalo gave Luukkonen a five-year contract in July after he emerged as the starter in 2023-24, and the deal carried a $4.75 million cap hit.
Hofer’s case is similar, only with a larger sample size. Luukkonen got paid after two seasons of more than 10 games; Hofer has three seasons under his belt.
A five-year contract would also carry Hofer through his final RFA year and keep him in place during the stretch when the Blues are expected to move toward contender status. On the money side, a $25 million deal makes sense.
It would be a major raise from his current $6.8 million over two seasons, but with the cap going up, it still lands in team-friendly territory. If Hofer keeps trending upward, the Blues could end up looking smart for moving early.
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