from Jeremy Rutherford of the St, Louis Post-Dispatch,

In the days leading to the NHL trade deadline Monday, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong spoke about needing to be creative if he wanted to improve his club. He wanted to add a skilled forward, but with the team’s salary-cap issues, making a move would take some maneuvering.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter how inventive Armstrong was.

“It wasn’t the creativity as much as the asking price to get creative,” he said. “We felt it was overextended by what we wanted.”

So the Blues stood pat on what league-wide was a rather lackluster deadline day with just 19 trades. But of those deals, 10 involved Central Division teams, including Colorado picking up Arizona forward Mikkel Boedker and Dallas fetching Calgary defenseman Kris Russell.

That left a little unrest among the fanbase of the Blues, who sit No. 4 in the NHL standings with 81 points and 17 games to play but whose only acquisition near the deadline was a trade with Edmonton for backup goalie Anders Nilsson.

“I believe in the group,” Armstrong said. “What you want to do is put a product on the ice that gets you into the playoffs. If we can continue to play well and get a playoff spot, anything can happen when you get there....

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