Blues center to undergo knee surgery, out six months

Blues center Oskar Sundqvist will miss the rest of the 2023-24 season after suffering a torn ACL in his right knee in Monday’s game against the Golden Knights, the team announced. The tear requires surgery, which carries a minimum recovery time of six months.

If his recovery timetable holds, Sundqvist won’t be ready when training camps begin ahead of the 2024-25 season in September. However, he hasn’t been ruled out for the beginning of the regular season.

Sundqvist suffered the injury midway through the second period of the eventual 2-1 overtime loss. After he cycled the puck behind the goal line in the Vegas zone, Golden Knights defenseman Brayden McNabb attempted to cross-check him into the boards but approached Sundqvist at an indirect angle that caused both players to fall awkwardly. 

Sundqvist’s right leg buckled during the fall, and he could not get up without assistance from Blues head athletic trainer, Ray Barile. Officials did not assess McNabb a penalty on the play.

The 30-year-old had a middling season after returning to the Blues in free agency for his second stint with the club. He appeared in 71 of St. Louis’s 72 games, posting six goals, 15 assists and 21 points while averaging 13:15 per game. 

It was his worst offensive showing on a per-game basis since 2017-18. After breaking into an everyday top-nine role the following season, Sundqvist recorded 48 goals, 66 assists and 114 points in 285 games for the Blues, Red Wings and Wild from 2018-19 to 2022-23.

He was never a particularly strong possession player at even strength but often did good work on the penalty kill for the Blues, whose 80.9 percent success rate with the man disadvantage was 10th in the league, with Sundqvist averaging regular minutes there across four seasons. 

A fan favorite who posted nine points in 25 playoff games en route to St. Louis’s first Stanley Cup in 2019, the Blues traded Sundqvist to the Red Wings at the 2022 deadline as part of the package that landed them defenseman Nick Leddy. 

He was traded again at last season’s deadline as a pending UFA with Detroit out of the playoff picture, heading to Minnesota for a fourth-round pick.

Despite Sundqvist’s decline in both the points and possession departments this season, Blues GM Doug Armstrong decided earlier this month that he wanted to keep him around through their pending retool, inking him to a two-year, $3M extension. 

The Blues hope he can recover from surgery in time to start that $1.5M AAV deal off on a high note next fall. He’ll be a UFA in 2026 after the extension expires.