"Before Jason Arnott and Jamie Langenbrunner signed Wednesday with the Blues, the NHL veterans asked the club "a lot of great questions about the depth of our team," general manager Doug Armstrong said.

The Stanley Cup champions and former team captains learned as much as they could before agreeing to terms on identical one-year, $2.5 million deals that could be worth as much as $2.8 million individually if they reach certain bonuses.

What they didn't know is that the other was also signing in St. Louis.

"I had no idea that (Armstrong) was pursuing Jamie," Arnott said. "I agreed to do the deal (Wednesday) morning, and he mentioned that he had signed Jamie as well. It was kind of cool in the way that we played in New Jersey together and we became pretty good friends, and now we get to do it in St. Louis as well."

In the time frame of a few hours, the Blues evolved from a team with a talented young core that had holes at forward and still needed veteran experience and leadership into a club with a logjam at the position that has filled its quota of veteran-savvy players.

Although their roles have decreased in recent years, Arnott, 36, and Langenbrunner, 35, will bring to the Blues a combined 2,207 games, 637 goals and 905 assists in the regular season. In 252 total playoff games, the pair has 64 goals and 94 assists. Arnott has one Stanley Cup — with New Jersey in 2000. Langenbrunner won one with Dallas in 1999 and New Jersey in 2003.

"Veteran presence is important on our team," Armstrong said. "We don't have a lot of players who have that, 'Been there, done that' experience. I think that we saw that last year, when we got on some positive trends, maybe our emotions got a little too high. And when we got on some negative trends, we couldn't shake it quick enough to get focused again."