After clearing waivers on Wednesday, the St. Louis Blues have moved veteran forward Scott Gomez to unconditional waivers with the intention of terminating his contract.
Gomez played a role for the Blues, filling in while the team was ravaged by injuries early in the season. He had a little success early, but was soon relegated to a fourth line role and made a healthy scratch with some regularity. The Blues are getting close to fully healthy now with the return of Kyle Brodziak and the return of Patrik Berglund on the horizon and that makes Gomez expendable.
“When we went down with all those injuries (early), he was good,” coach Ken Hitchcock said Tuesday in the team’s announcement.
“It’s not fair for him to come and play a role he’s never played before. Hopefully somebody picks him up and he can play a Top-6 or Top-9 role and have that support. With Brodziak back in, and obviously (Patrik) Berglund coming back in, he’s a player that would just be waiting for injury and that could sometimes be a long wait.”
With Gomez having cleared waivers, it looks like there aren’t any teams look to give him a contract right now. That could change if a team gets a barrage of injuries and needs to fill in some gaps, but he wouldn’t be the only option available in that situation.
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Dustin Nelson is the News Editor for The Hockey Writers. He’s a contributor to Hockey Prospectus, Hockey Wilderness, and writes a column for Rotowire. He’s also written for Gone Puck Wild, Wild Xtra, InDigest, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Tiny Mix Tapes, Prefix Magazine & other publications. Have a tip? Email him at dlukenelson[at]gmail[dot]com.
