Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Fabbri gets one-year deal from Blues, looks to get career back on track

Washington Capitals v St Louis Blues

ST. LOUIS, MO - JANUARY 19: Robby Fabbri #15 of the St. Louis Blues and Nate Schmidt #88 of the Washington Capitals chase after the puck on January 19, 2017 at Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Scott Rovak/NHLI via Getty Images)

NHLI via Getty Images

The St. Louis Blues announced on Friday afternoon that they have re-signed restricted free agent forward Robby Fabbri to a one-year contract that will pay him $900,000 during the 2019-20 season. Once Fabbri was given a qualifying offer earlier this summer it was pretty much a given that he was going to be re-signed. The question now becomes whether or not he can get his career back on track after what were three mostly lost seasons.

During the 2016-17 season Fabbri looked as if he was on his way to becoming an excellent player for the Blues. He was a recent first-round pick, still only 21 years old, and was one of the team’s most productive and talented forwards that was building off of a promising rookie campaign.

But in early February of that season he suffered a devastating ACL injury that sidelined him for the remainder of the season.

Things got worse for him when he re-injured the same knee the following offseason, forcing him to miss the entire 2017-18 season.

He didn’t return to the Blues lineup until November of this past season after having missed nearly two full years of what should have been prime development years in the NHL. It proved to be a difficult season as he appeared in just 32 games, playing only 12 minutes per night (a three-minute per night drop from his first two years in the league) and scoring just two goals and six total points.
[ProHockeyTalk’s 2019 NHL free agency tracker]

He added one goal in 10 playoff games for the Blues on their way to winning the Stanley Cup.

Fabbri is a fascinating player for the Blues this season because he is still such a talented player and is still young enough that there should be at least some potential there. He is a year removed from the knee injuries that derailed such a significant part of his career to this point, and prior to the injury was on track to becoming a legitimate second-line scorer. Before the ACL injury in 2017 he was scoring at 20-goal, 50-point pace over 82 games while also posting positive possession numbers. He was a really good player and one of the best ones the Blues had.

With his injuries now in the rear-view mirror and a chance to start the 2019-20 season healthy, he can hopefully get back to that level for the Blues.

With Fabbri now signed the Blues still have to re-sign restricted free agent forwards Ivan Barbashev and Oskar Sundqvist, defender Joel Edmundson, and starting goalie Jordan Binnington.

Sundqvist, Edmundson, and Binnington all filed for salary arbitration, with Binnington’s being one of the most fascinating cases on the schedule.

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.