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Asset Management

Ladies and gentlemen, your Game Time Prospect Department has a little issue with Blues' management right about now...

As you may have already heard, RW prospect Nikolay Lemtyugov met with his coaches and teammates earlier this week, and announced that he was returning to Russia, effective immediately.

Won't be seeing any more of this puckhandling skill in Peoria, it looks like...

Now, a lot of people have already responded on the various message boards, expressing sentiments like, "good riddance," and "the hell with Russians anyway," and "if he can't take the heat, best he stays out of the kitchen," and similar expressions.

These sentiments are all well and good, and I completely understand the emotions behind them. Lemtyugov told the press several weeks ago that he was committed to staying in Peoria one year, two years, whatever it takes in order to get his shot.

I fully understand that people are frustrated that he decided to go back on his word, especially seeing as how other Eastern European players (Konstantin Zakharov and Tomas Kana) have done the same thing to the Blues in recent years.

What's got me steamed here is that, in this case, this is just piss-poor asset management by the Blues.

Lemtyugov's game-in-game-out effort and performance wasn't consistent enough to warrant him getting a shot with the Blues right now. I get that.

I also get that other Peoria players that have been called up recently are far more consistent in their effort, and therefore, in the Blues' eyes, more deserving of a callup.

My question is: at what point does skill take priority over grit?

We have all seen way too many grinders and gritty players shuffled in and out of St. Louis over the last few years, all the while being told that these players were stopgaps until the real talent in the organization -- like, oh, say, Nikolay Lemtyugov, for example -- was groomed and ready.

Bottom line here, folks, is that Lemtyugov had a future in this organization, and in the NHL.

Brad Winchester and Cam Paddock don't.

And Lemtyugov was passed over for a promotion, in favor of Winchester and Paddock, because Winchester and Paddock play the gritty, "leave-it-all-on-the-ice" kind of game that Andy Murray likes.

Lemtyugov was an asset, and a valuable one.  If the Blues weren't going to give him a shot, either this year or any time soon, then you can't tell me that there was no other organization out there who would, and which would be willing to give up something of comparable value in exchange for Lemtyugov's services.

Lemtyugov was a seventh-round draft pick; do you honestly mean to tell me that the Blues, knowing (and having recently implied very strongly in the media) that Lemtyugov was not getting a call-up this season, couldn't get anyone else to give up at least a seventh-round pick in exchange for him?

Or that they didn't even try?

As it stands now, the Blues get diddly-squat for the three years they've spent developing Nikolay Lemtyugov. And that, no matter how you slice it, or try to justify it, is piss-poor asset management.

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"If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil."

-- Otto von Bismarck, 1851

 

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