ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Blues were back on the ice Monday for the beginning of Training Camp 2.0 as they try to bring the Stanley Cup back to St. Louis.
Leading them back was their captain, Alex Pietrangelo. But Pietrangelo was supposed to be doing something much different right now.
Free agency was supposed to start on July 1, but again, these are uncertain times, and with free agency moving to Oct. 9 this season, Pietrangelo remains hopeful of re-signing in St. Louis after his seven-year, $45.5 million contract expires at the conclusion of these playoffs and he can become an unrestricted free agent.
"It's kind of a tough question to answer right now," Pietrangelo said. "There wasn't a whole lot going on. There's a whole lot of questions regarding everything moving forward, CBA a lot of things that both sides were kind of sitting down waiting to see what was going to happen before any discussions. Quiet, but we're worrying about the playoffs right now. We'll move forward and see what happens here.
"Not much to say about it other than the same thing Army said. The goal is to get something done. That's been the goal since the beginning. We'll see where things go. Focus right now is to get through this thing healthy and playing. We'll see where things end up."
Now that the Blues and Armstrong know the salary cap will remain at $81.5 million for the next two seasons, and the Blues have some sort of idea where that number will go beyond with six years of labor peace following a new collective bargaining agreement, Armstrong's focus in this won't come any time soon.
"We're going to deal with it when the season's over," Armstrong said. "We know what the cap is and we'll make decisions based on that."
