St. Louis Blues Acquire Marcel Goc from Pittsburgh Penguins for Maxim Lapierre

The St. Louis Blues will be welcoming a new face to the club when they officially return from the All-Star break on Thursday, as the team announced on Tuesday night that they have acquired center Marcel Goc from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for center Maxim Lapierre.

The 31-year-old Goc was a first-rounder of the San Jose Sharks in 2001, and after spending the first four seasons of his career with them, he’s since logged time with the Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers, and Penguins.  He was the Penguins’ fourth-line center at the time of the trade and will likely end up literally trading places with Lapierre, as he’s likely to center the fourth line with Steve Ott and Ryan Reaves on the wings. Goc is an inch and about 20 pounds smaller than Lapierre, so the fourth line will lose some physicality, but he is considered a strong defensive player who can contribute effectively on the penalty kill.

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Goc is by no means a heavy contributor on offense; he has two goals and four assists through 43 games this year, and his career highs in both goals and assists came with the Predators in 2009-10, when he had 12 goals and 18 assists through 73 games. That makes him similar to Lapierre, who had two goals and seven assists in 45 games for the Blues this year and has put up single-digit totals in the goals and assists categories for most of his career.

Lapierre had one of the best seasons of his career during his first season in St. Louis last year, scoring nine goals and six assists over 71 games. However, his level of play seemed to drop off this season, and he was made a healthy scratch at the beginning of 2015 in San Jose.

There are no financial ramifications at all to the deal; both players have a $1.2 million-dollar cap hit for 2014-15 and are free agents at the end of the season. Ultimately, it’s an exchange of similarly-skilled players with similar roles who both could probably benefit from a change of scenery.

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