The St. Louis Blues paid a steep price on June 23, 2017, but Brayden Schenn turned that gamble into one of the defining moves of the Doug Armstrong era.
St. Louis landed the 25-year-old center from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for Jori Lehtera, the 27th overall pick in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, and a conditional 2018 first-round pick protected in the top 10.
At the time, plenty of people around the league wondered if two first-rounders was too much for a player who hadn’t yet reached 60 points in a season. In hindsight, that debate didn’t last long.
The Blues needed help right in the middle of the ice. They were coming off a 46-29-7 season for 99 points and had already moved from Ken Hitchcock to Mike Yeo behind the bench.
Their top-nine centers - Paul Stastny, Patrik Berglund and Lehtera - had combined for 96 points, with Stastny leading the group at 40. Schenn stepped in and changed that picture immediately.
His first season in St. Louis was a breakthrough.
Schenn not only cleared the 60-point line, he finished with 28 goals and 70 points in 82 games, tops on the team. That performance also earned him an NHL All-Star selection and showed the Blues they had gotten far more offensive punch than the pre-trade buzz suggested.
But the real payoff came the next year.
During the Blues’ 2018-19 championship run, Schenn became a key piece of a hard-working second line and delivered exactly what the team needed from him: grit, 200-foot responsibility and timely scoring. He put up 12 points (5-7--12) in 26 playoff games, and his third-period goal in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Boston Bruins pushed St. Louis’ lead to 3-0 and put the franchise on the brink of its first title.
That run helped cement Schenn’s place in St. Louis.
He signed an eight-year extension in Oct. 2019, later became the 23rd captain in franchise history, and spent nine seasons with the Blues. Over that stretch, he scored 181 goals and finished with 465 points in 650 regular-season games.
Philadelphia’s side of the deal never quite produced the kind of return the Flyers were hoping for when former general manager Ron Hextall made the move to add draft capital and clear salary. Lehtera, included mainly for salary purposes, managed just 11 points in 89 games over two seasons before heading back to Europe.
The 27th overall pick in 2017 became Morgan Frost, who showed flashes of high-end skill but couldn’t find steady production through multiple coaching changes. In 278 games over six seasons with Philadelphia, Frost totaled 50 goals and 135 points.
The conditional 2018 first-round pick became Joel Farabee at No. 14 overall. The Syracuse native developed into a useful top-nine winger, posting two 20-goal seasons and once reaching 50 points, but he never fully locked into the kind of consistent, difference-making role the Flyers seemed to envision.
Neither Farabee nor Frost turned into the kind of foundational pieces Philadelphia had hoped for, and the Flyers eventually moved on from both players in a Jan. 2025 trade with the Calgary Flames, a deal that brought back Andrei Kuzmenko and closed the book on the original Schenn return.
Giving up multiple first-round picks always carried risk for Armstrong and the Blues. Frost and Farabee might have grown into long-term pillars in Philadelphia, and Schenn could have topped out as a physical center without another level to reach.
Instead, St. Louis hit the bull’s-eye.
Schenn fit the age, style and leadership profile the Blues needed, and the trade helped deliver a Stanley Cup down Market Street and a championship banner to the rafters of the Enterprise Center.
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