New Jersey Devils: 5 Trade Rentals That Might Actually Be Worth It
By Nick Villano
Vladimir Tarasenko
It’s been almost two full years since Vladimir Tarasenko asked out of the St. Louis Blues organization. To his credit, he’s been incredibly patient, but that patience is also clearly wearing thin. Tarasenko hasn’t looked like the same guy, despite making yet another All-Star Game this season.
His advanced stats are pretty terrible despite having decent counting stats. His CF% (basically the number of chances allowed against the number of chances taken) is 16th on the team. This is a bad team, by the way. He’s 15th in high-danger chances taken at 5v5. Despite this, he still has 29 points in 38 games. While that isn’t crazy good, it’s definitely good enough from a guy who’s clearly trying to play his way out of St. Louis.
The question becomes, “Can Tarasenko turn it back on?”. We think he can. He had 34 goals in 75 games last season. He was trying to prove to other teams he was worth the price of acquisition. He finished with more than a point per game, and that kind of production very rarely disappears overnight.
The Blues have a busy trade deadline coming up. They need to make a decision on Tarasenko, Ryan O’Reilly, Pavel Buchnevich, Ivan Barbashev, Noel Acciari, and Thomas Greiss. That’s a lot of rentals that Doug Armstrong must address. The Devils have the right prospects to help the Blues reset, and it probably wouldn’t cost the Devils more than a middle-tier prospect and a second or third-round pick.