EP Rinkside 2022 NHL Prospect Pool Rankings: No. 26-ranked St. Louis Blues

You have to admire the St. Louis Blues ability to seamlessly transition from one core to the next without skipping a beat, with Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas stepping into their primes as Ryan O'Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko slowly exit theirs. It's what diligent work at the draft and careful development can do for a team.

That sort of prolonged success has come at a cost, though. A string of high-profile graduations has seen this system hemorrhage talent without the sort of high-end draft capital necessary to replace it. It's just the natural order of things. You get a Stanley Cup, and it's going to result in lean times on the farm in the years that follow.

So there probably isn't another Thomas or Kyrou on the way, but that's no need to despair. This system boasts quality depth at every position, and they have a handful of players who have the potential to feature in a top-six or a top-four role at the height of their career. In a hard-cap league like the NHL, getting those sorts of players in your lineup on entry-level deals can make all the difference in the world, too.

With that, let's take a look at the Blues of tomorrow, a group that's likely to insulate the newly forming core rather than emerge as one of their own.