St. Louis Blues Add Sergei Zubov as the Steen Retool Settles Into Place

If you spent the week refreshing your feed for St. Louis Blues news, you mostly got a lesson in what a finished to-do list looks like. Between July 19 and July 26 the Blues made zero trades and signed zero NHL players — and that's not a problem, it's the point. New general manager Alexander Steen spent late June and the first half of July burning through the franchise's biggest agenda items: trading Jordan Kyrou, landing Mason McTavish, adding Brandon Carlo and extending Connor McMichael before an arbitrator could weigh in. What this week offered instead was the quieter stuff — a Hall of Fame hire, a new way to watch the games, and a first real look at the calendar that will shape the next ten weeks in St. Louis.

What actually happened this week

The headline arrived Friday, when the Blues hired Hall of Fame defenseman Sergei Zubov as an advisor to hockey operations. Zubov joins a front office that has been almost completely rewired since July 1, when Steen formally took over as general manager and Doug Armstrong moved up to president of hockey operations. The same announcement wave earlier this month brought Keith Tkachuk aboard as an advisor, Chris Thorburn as director of player development and Robert Bortuzzo as a full-time pro scout, with Joe Hishon added as an organizational skills coach a week later. If it feels like half the alumni association now has an office at the practice facility, that appears to be the plan.

Three days before the Zubov news, on July 21, the club announced a partnership with the NHL to produce Blues regional broadcasts for 2026-27 — all 70 non-national games, distributed across cable, satellite, streaming and over-the-air television, with out-of-market access through NHL Power Play on ESPN+. Channel placement and pricing are still to be announced, which is of course the part fans actually care about.

And on Sunday, the World Junior Summer Showcase opened in Windsor, Ontario, with three Blues defense prospects — Luke Schairer, Nick Bogas and Landon Nycz — invited to Team USA's camp, which runs through August 1.

The retool that made a quiet week possible

Some context for the calm. The 2025-26 season ended with the Blues at 37-33-12 — 86 points, fifth in the Central, a minus-27 goal differential — after a March deadline sell-off that sent Justin Faulk to Detroit and Brayden Schenn to the Islanders. Robert Thomas led the team with 64 points and rookie Jimmy Snuggerud scored 21 goals, but nobody in the building pretended the year was anything other than a miss.

Steen's response was fast and unsentimental. On June 23 he traded Kyrou to Washington for Connor McMichael, Swedish prospect Milton Gastrin and the No. 16 overall pick. Four days later he flipped the No. 15 and No. 29 picks to Anaheim for McTavish, a center with five seasons left on the six-year contract he signed last September and 41 points in 75 games last year. He also added Carlo from Toronto for two 2026 third-round picks, giving the blue line a veteran right-side presence. One month, three trades, and the middle of the roster looks completely different.

McMichael, paid before the hearing

The tidiest piece of business closed on July 16, when McMichael signed a six-year, $40.5 million extension carrying a $6.75 million cap hit. That wiped his scheduled July 25 arbitration hearing off the calendar nine days before it would have happened. McMichael was the Blues' only arbitration filer this summer — one of just 15 league-wide — and choosing six years over a short award tells you exactly how the organization sees him: not a bridge piece, a foundation piece.

The rest of the summer shopping was deliberately modest:

• Ross Johnston, three years at $2 million per season, signed away from Anaheim
• Dillon Dube, one year
• Jonatan Berggren, re-signed for one year at $2 million
• Oskar Sundqvist, back on a one-year, two-way deal worth $850,000 at the NHL level

Jonathan Drouin, meanwhile, was bought out at the end of June, closing the book on a deadline pickup that never quite fit.

The cap picture

The 2026-27 salary cap lands at $104 million, and PuckPedia projects the Blues at roughly $99.6 million committed with a full 23-man roster — call it $4.4 million of breathing room. That's enough space to react, not enough to splurge, and there's no obvious splurge left anyway. The more interesting math sits a year out: Jordan Binnington, Pius Suter and Carlo are pending 2027 unrestricted free agents, while Jake Neighbours, Snuggerud, Joel Hofer and Logan Mailloux headline the 2027 restricted class. Steen's first extension season will be busier than his first free agency.

One name worth filing away: Elliotte Friedman reported earlier this month that St. Louis has taken a long look at Carolina defenseman Alexander Nikishin, fresh off a Stanley Cup with the Hurricanes. He is not offer-sheet eligible, so any pursuit would require a trade — and after June's spending of draft capital, the Blues would be dealing from the roster or the prospect pool rather than a stack of picks. Nothing suggests it's close; it's simply the kind of swing this front office has shown it will consider.

Prospects: two first-round centers and a camp without skates

June's draft brought nine new prospects, led by a pair of first-round centers: Tynan Lawrence at No. 11, the Muskegon captain and Clark Cup MVP who is headed to Boston University, and Maddox Dagenais at No. 16, a 6-foot-4 Quebec Remparts forward who scored 30 goals and won the QMJHL's Mike Bossy Trophy. Fold in McTavish and McMichael, and the organization spent a single month restocking a position group that had been thin for years.

Development camp, notably, barely touched the ice. The Blues ran a new format built around team history, nutrition sessions, a cooking competition and visits to Busch Stadium and Energizer Park — bonding over battle drills — with about 19 prospects attending, including Lawrence, Dagenais, Justin Carbonneau and Dmitri Buchelnikov. Gastrin, the center acquired in the Kyrou deal, was loaned to Brynäs of the Swedish Hockey League on July 6 for another development season.

What's next in St. Louis Blues news

The 2026-27 schedule, released July 16, opens with a road-heavy stretch: the Blues begin the league's new 84-game season on October 2 in Dallas and play six of their first eight away from home, with the home opener waiting until October 8 against San Jose. A few dates to circle:

• September 19 — the preseason opens at home against Dallas, the first of four exhibition games split between home-and-homes with Dallas and Chicago
• October 24 — the defending champion Hurricanes visit
• November 28 — Kyrou returns with Washington
• April 10 — the regular-season finale at home against Utah

Training camp arrives in September, and the questions are pleasantly concrete: where McTavish and McMichael slot behind or beside Thomas, whether Snuggerud builds on his 21-goal rookie year, and how a reshuffled defense absorbs Carlo.

That's the state of the St. Louis Blues at the end of July: the loud work finished early, the front office stacked with franchise alumni, and a retooled forward group waiting on September. Quiet weeks like this one are what a plan looks like from the outside. The next month should stay calm — and then that October 2 opener in Dallas starts telling us whether the plan was any good.