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

Time remains to reach an agreement, but with Tarasenko eligible to receive outside offer sheets beginning July 1, and with Armstrong’s vow that the contract be completed before the club follows up on any other plans, a resolution is of the essence.

Not so, says Armstrong.

“(Tarasenko) knows he’s going to be here, we know he’s going to be here,” Armstrong told the Post-Dispatch. “When it happens, it happens.”

Tarasenko, 23, will be wrapping up his entry-level contract at the end of this month, making him an RFA. In three years, he produced 66 goals and 135 points in 179 regular-season games, while posting 10 goals and 11 points in 13 playoff games.

A campaign of 37 goals and 73 points in the 2014-15 regular season placed Tarasenko in the top 10 in the NHL in both categories. He followed that up with six goals and seven points in the team’s first-round playoff series loss to Minnesota.

They are numbers that could take the right winger from his entry-level base salary of $900,000 (excluding bonuses) to among the team’s top-paid players next season — in the neighborhood of center Paul Stastny ($7 million) and defenseman Alex Pietrangelo ($6.5 million).

read on