The St. Louis Blues have signed winger David Perron to a four-year contract worth $4 million per season. Welcome to DobberHockey's Free Agent Frenzy 2018! We've been here covering this day every year since 2005

The Blues get: the player they lost to expansion last summer. In fact, this will be Perron’s third stint with St. Louis – he had 46 points for them in 2016-17, and played six seasons with them to start his career (best season was 50 points there). Coming off a career high of 66 points, the 30-year-old was in a position to really cash in. But it looks as though Perron took a bit of a discount to play where he wanted for the long term.

Fantasy Players impacted: With Perron re-joining the Blues and Robby Fabbri returning from injury, the team is suddenly very deep at forward. Add in the fact that Zach Sanford is now healthy and had been considered a regular on a depth line, Nikita Soshnikov signed a one-way contract and Sammy Blais was knocking on the door of a roster spot, and the outlook is quite muddled. The Blues currently have 16-18 players who could be on the roster, and that’s without getting into the prospects such as Robert Thomas. Current depth chart:

Jaden Schwartz Brayden Schenn Vladimir Tarasenko

David Perron Tyler Bozak Alex Steen

Robby Fabbri Vladimir Sobotka Tage Thompson

Zach Sanford Patrik Berglund Nikita Soshnikov

Sammy Blais Ivan Barbashev Dmitri Jaskin

With Oskar Sundqvist, Chris Thorburn and Beau Bennett as extras and a top prospect in Robert Thomas knocking on the door. I’ve already bumped Thomas down my draft list as it looks like the wait time just got extended, whether you saw him on the team next year or the year after. Blais was a sleeper prospect I had put on my radar when putting together the Fantasy Prospects Report, but there just isn’t any room here for him to grow offensively. Ditto for Thompson.

At center the team was pretty weak, that is until news of the Tyler Bozak signing broke (more on him will be up within the hour) so the pivots they have here are going to over-perform. Specifically Bozak, but possibly Berglund and Sobotka. As for Perron – he could have stayed put and enjoyed similar success, or he could have gone to a team in need of wingers. That would give him the potential to hit 60 points again. In St. Louis this doesn’t happen. There’s just not enough PP time to go around here and there’s only one scoring-line center on the team – and he won’t be playing with Perron.

Fantasy Players this helps, in order:

1. Tyler Bozak, who will have his own fantasy trade breakdown up shortly

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2. Patrik Berglund

3. Vladimir Sobotka

4. Ivan Barbashev

Fantasy Players this hurts, in order:

1. David Perron

2. Sammy Blais (prospect profile here)

3. Dmitri Jaskin

4. Robert Thomas (prospect profile here)