Robert Thomas is finally locked up with a two year contract

It’s taken longer than Robert Thomas, Doug Armstrong, or most Blues fans would want, but the team finally came to terms with Thomas on a new contract.

Thomas’ new deal is a two-year contract at an AAV of $2.8 million a season. That’s a raise of a little more than a million and a half dollars a season for the Blues’ young centerman. Despite missing 23 games last year with injury, and only scoring three goals and nine assists in the 33 regular-season games Thomas played in, he garnered the highest new salard of any of the restricted free agents this year save for Jordan Kyrou. He and Kyrou are both signed to identical two year deals that should give each player plenty of time to prove their value for their next contract.

The signing clearly puts the Blues over the cap with a full signed roster. The team has options: go with a light roster and have to juggle callups, or place Oskar Sundqvist on the LTIR. Odds are very good that it’s going to be a couple of months before Sundqvist is in playing shape, so it looks like Armstrong has kicked the Blues’ cap compliance issue down the road. There’s still time to deal Vladimir Tarasenko before Sundqvist is activated, and this is something that Armstrong looks like he’s banking on something on that front to work out.