What can Blues do with four first-round picks?
It may not have been the most fun 2025-26 season for the St. Louis Blues, but Friday’s night’s first round of the 2026 NHL Entry Draft will be Blues fans’ time to get pumped. After trading forward Jordan Kyrou to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, the Blues now have the 11th, 15th, 16th, and 29th picks of the first round.
If St. Louis simply sticks and picks, they’ll walk away with four prospects worth getting excited about. Having that much draft capital, though, also affords them the opportunity to trade into the upper reaches of the first round, trade back to acquire future picks, or even acquire a current NHL player if they so choose.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton were joined by Daily Faceoff‘s prospect analyst Steven Ellis to discuss how the Blues could use their four first-round picks.
Carter Hutton: What can we expect from the St. Louis Blues when it comes to the first round, what they take, or what they trade away?
Steven Ellis: That’s the thing, I think it makes sense for them to make a couple trades. I wonder if they move up into the top ten. Mike Grier a few minutes ago said that he got a very interesting offer for number two. Could it involve the Blues throwing a bunch of draft picks at this and wanting to move into second place? That would honestly make a ton of sense. It would be a really good fit for them. I’m not sure how that would logistically work.
Let’s just say they actually use all their picks here. They could probably get a defenseman, they could probably get a Malte Gustafsson at number 11. Then you go to 15, I’ve got Oscar Hemming, a player who didn’t have a great year, he didn’t even play the first half of the season, but they he went and played the second half and was really good in college and I think he’d be impressive. You can get Alexander Command and get a really good center, a very reliable guy whose ceiling is a second-line center but has a really strong floor as a number three, so I really like that. And then you look at that last pick, and maybe you get Brooks Rogowski, a 6’7″ center who can skate. Maybe you go all out on skill and get J.P. Hurlbert, one of the best players in the WHL. Maybe you pick Xavier Villeneuve, who is the newest version of Lane Hutson. There’s actually a lot of really good options here, so I like the idea of them having all four picks and really accelerating this rebuild, but having four picks in the first round makes me think they’re going to make a trade.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Wednesday’s episode here…