2023-2024 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread

[LogosBlue]

I was very impressed with Vladi's character during his time here, especially when things went sideways for him. That's when a persons character is really tested. He was always professional, humble and thankful for his tenure here and for the fans.

He was anything but a whiner.

 

[Xerloris]

I was very impressed with Vladi's character during his time here, especially when things went sideways for him. That's when a persons character is really tested. He was always professional, humble and thankful for his tenure here and for the fans.

He was anything but a whiner.

Can you tell us about your source from the locker room?

 

[shpongle falls]

So what do you guys think happens with the logjam of defenseman we have this season? We’ve got Parayko, Leddy, Krug, Faulk, Scandella, Rosen, Tucker, Perunovich, and Bortuzzo. That’s 9 all together. Tucker and Perunovich need NHL minutes.

Do they keep Bortz and Rosen in the pressbox most of the year? Having Krug and Perunovich in the same line up would be sketchy but on paper having Krug on pp1 and Perunovich on pp2 could be nice.

What do you guys think Army should do? I like Scandella and Rosen but both would be kind of redundant since we have Tucks and Scotty. I mean I guess there will probably be injuries so maybe it works itself out but I dunno man.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

So what do you guys think happens with the logjam of defenseman we have this season? We’ve got Parayko, Leddy, Krug, Faulk, Scandella, Rosen, Tucker, Perunovich, and Bortuzzo. That’s 9 all together. Tucker and Perunovich need NHL minutes.

Do they keep Bortz and Rosen in the pressbox most of the year? Having Krug and Perunovich in the same line up would be sketchy but on paper having Krug on pp1 and Perunovich on pp2 could be nice.

What do you guys think Army should do? I like Scandella and Rosen but both would be kind of redundant since we have Tucks and Scotty. I mean I guess there will probably be injuries so maybe it works itself out but I dunno man.

Scandella and Perunovich (and maybe Krug) are gonna be broken by week 2.

 

[BlueDream]

Tarasenko is a dope.

He’s on a one year deal so he’ll fire his agent once again next summer.

 

[mk80]

Scandella and Perunovich (and maybe Krug) are gonna be broken by week 2 of preseason.

Allow me to clarify the timeline of your bold prediction

 

[Reality Czech]

Can you tell us about your source from the locker room?

His source is as good as anyone else's around here.

It's kind of sad to see how quickly Blues fans throw Vladi under the bus after all his years of service here. He was a loyal soldier for a decade and helped bring us a Cup. I'll always be as fan of his.

 

[Xerloris]

His source is as good as anyone else's around here.

It's kind of sad to see how quickly Blues fans throw Vladi under the bus after all his years of service here. He was a loyal soldier for a decade and helped bring us a Cup. I'll always be as fan of his.

Going by the evidence we can see is not throwing him under the bus. Did the team play better the very day he was gone? Yes, yes they did. Dos that mean he was the cause of problems behind the scene? No but it means there is a possibility he was a problem.

 

[HighNote]

It's also possible that everyone in the locker room loved Vladi and they wanted to win one for him, or to show that they are still a good team without such a great player, or they just happened to be clicking that night, or the players were afraid they might also be traded and so they started playing hard, or the other team just had a bad night, or....

We simply don't know and likely won't know what kind of guy he was in the locker room and how the team viewed him.

I've decided to remain neutral because that is all I can do with the facts I know. Sure, you can speculate one way or the other, but it must be prefaced by the fact that it is nothing more than speculation and that you don't actually know anything beyond what everyone else besides the team knows.

I always loved Vladi and still do. I wish him the best of luck wherever he plays, unless he's playing against the Blues. Him leaving marked the beginning of a new chapter for the Blues, whether it's a good or bad chapter is up to Doug Armstrong and the team. Regardless, the page has turned and the team has moved on.

 

[Reality Czech]

Going by the evidence we can see is not throwing him under the bus. Did the team play better the very day he was gone? Yes, yes they did. Dos that mean he was the cause of problems behind the scene? No but it means there is a possibility he was a problem.

I think it's people trying to make connections that aren't really there. The team played better when ROR was gone, was he the problem? Or was it that the whole team was playing like ass for the first 60% of the year and started playing better when the pressure was off? There was plenty of blame to go around last year. Tarasenko deserves his share but there are few guys on the team who don't.

I just find it hard to believe that the team sucked because they were distracted by Tarasenko. If that's the case it says more about the rest of the team than anything else. It's the big leagues, that's not an acceptable excuse.

 

[Renard]

David Backes's tiff with Tarasenko in a practice tells us a lot.

Backes didn't make it a practice to assault teammates in practice, so I'm guessing Backes had enough of Tarasenko's prima dona act.

I'm also sure that Vladi had some good qualities. It can't be easy to make the journey from Siberia to St. Louis and live in a foreign culture.

 

[Reality Czech]

David Backes's tiff with Tarasenko in a practice tells us a lot.

Backes didn't make it a practice to assault teammates in practice, so I'm guessing Backes had enough of Tarasenko's prima dona act.

I'm also sure that Vladi had some good qualities. It can't be easy to make the journey from Siberia to St. Louis and live in a foreign culture.

Quote from Backes:

When it comes to specific memories with him and I, he had a little bit of a learning curve coming into the league, and there was the time where I thought he was being selfish or lazy in a game. I went after him in one practice to try to send a message that that’s not acceptable for us. We got heated, but shortly after that, he came up to me and said, “I understand it.” I think the message was received, and he was a lot better after that. He was a guy that could have sulked from something like that, but he took a message and really rose to the occasion and was a superior player after that, buying into what we were doing as a team. It’s tough to have a glorious ending with any organization, where you ride out into the sunset. I don’t know what his beef was, but I think over time those thorns start to dull a bit and, for me, he’ll be remembered as a supreme talent, a supreme goal scorer, a guy who could win games for you on his own.

'We had something special': Ex-Blues share their favorite Tarasenko stories

After 11 illustrious years in St. Louis, Tarasenko has moved on, and so have the Blues. How will he be remembered?

theathletic.com

Teammates scrapping in practice isn't such a rare occurrence. These guys are intense competitors and one incident doesn't define a player or person. Willing to bet Backes and Tarasenko still respect each other. Maybe Vladi did need to grow up a bit but the same could be said of a lot of guys. Who's gonna scrap with Kyrou in practice this season to wake him up? That's the role of veteran leaders on any team.

 

[BlueDream]

I think it's people trying to make connections that aren't really there. The team played better when ROR was gone, was he the problem? Or was it that the whole team was playing like ass for the first 60% of the year and started playing better when the pressure was off? There was plenty of blame to go around last year. Tarasenko deserves his share but there are few guys on the team who don't.

It's also possible that everyone in the locker room loved Vladi and they wanted to win one for him, or to show that they are still a good team without such a great player, or they just happened to be clicking that night, or the players were afraid they might also be traded and so they started playing hard, or the other team just had a bad night, or....

These arguments could be used if it was just a one time thing but it wasn’t. The Blues always played well when Tarasenko was out of the lineup with his injuries. Look how good they were in 2019-2020 when he missed almost the whole season… even Perron said he thinks that team was better than the Cup team before Bouwmeester went down.

At some point that stops being a coincidence. When you remove a one-dimensional player from our lineup (which Tarasenko was) we generally don’t miss a beat. That’s really just a fact at this point, you can stop trying to jump through hoops to defend Tarasenko.

 

[Reality Czech]

These arguments could be used if it was just a one time thing but it wasn’t. The Blues always played well when Tarasenko was out of the lineup with his injuries. Look how good they were in 2019-2020 when he missed almost the whole season… even Perron said he thinks that team was better than the Cup team before Bouwmeester went down.

At some point that stops being a coincidence. When you remove a one-dimensional player from our lineup (which Tarasenko was) we generally don’t miss a beat. That’s really just a fact at this point, you can stop trying to jump through hoops to defend Tarasenko.

Guess I'm just a loyal fan. Think what you want. One player doesn't make or break a team. The negativity around here is depressing. Vladi did a lot of good things here, can't take that away either.

 

[Spektre]

Guess I'm just a loyal fan. Think what you want. The negativity around here is depressing.

I hope the Blues score 10 goals every game but still go 0-82.

 

[Brockon]

I'll fully admit that I'm a more casual fan than many on the board here, and I recognize the need to move on Tarasenko from a roster construction standpoint - it's difficult to have multiple players that show a propensity to become disengaged in the defensive back checking that past Blues teams were defined by. You can't shelter everyone when you have 2-3 highly skilled offensive players that play that engaged defensive game for short stretches, but don't commit to playing that way for long stretches of the season. Krug, Faulk, Tarasenko, Kyrou, Thomas and Schenn all did it to varying degrees last year - something had to give and there's more to be done still before this team sees the playoffs again.

I know that we got a pretty respectable return at the deadline and we had to get something back, or see the team mired in a pretty dark place to retool or rebuild from this offseason. I like many others, am quite happy with what DA gave us moving forward from the draft with a soft target of being in the mix for the playoffs starting somewhere in the 25-27 seasons.

I also have to admit seeing Tarasenko gone is bitter sweet. His game changing offence in the 2010s gave watching our games an edge of your seat type of thrill, not unlike what Kaprisov brings to some pretty dull Minnesota games now. Similarly defensively minded, structured low event games that become much more exciting when Tarasenko/Kaprisov step on the ice. There were games when Tarasenko single-handedly gave us wins, but at our peak he didn't NEED to be the guy - our cup run, he scored consistently, but noticeably elevated his defensive game for the run. Then despite the trade request, he played a great 2021/22 season as a consummate pro.

I'll miss that player, and allow those memories to be the ones I keep, rather than dwell on speculation and rumour, or think about his sub-par performance in the 2022/23 season. I wish him the best in Ottawa, and hope he gets the opportunity to chose how his NHL career ends, rather than begin to undermine his legacy here now that he's gone.

Perhaps most importantly, with our departures this year, I'm looking forward to seeing who elevates or grows into the openings. It's been a long off-season and I'm itching to start seeing new things to discuss, rather than seeing rehashes of old beefs be kept alive or discussing rumours. I want to have eyes on Bolduc, Dean, Neighbours, Alexandrov, Tucker and Perunovich - I want to see some of them force DA to look for ways to clear permanent roster spots for them by the TDL and next off-season. It's pretty clear that we can't maintain the roster as is, seeing training camp and exhibition games is always a positive for the Fall, which remains one of my least favourite times of the year.

 

[HighNote]

These arguments could be used if it was just a one time thing but it wasn’t. The Blues always played well when Tarasenko was out of the lineup with his injuries.

I'm not arguing whether or not the team played better with him out of the lineup, I'm simply stating the fact that we don't know WHY the team played better in those games. People could be right in saying that Tarasenko was not liked in the locker room and so the team played better when he wasn't on the ice, or that overall he was more bad than good for the team on the ice. Those are possibilities. Another possibility is that players moved into bigger roles due to injuries and wanted to play harder to impress. It could also be that lines were forced to be changed around and those new line configurations clicked, or there was a player that was in a funk and they got rejuvenated by being on a different line. These are just a couple things that could happen consistently in games where any top player is out of the lineup, and those reasons are just as likely as the one you set forth. Sometimes in short spans where a top player is out, teams play extra hard. It happens with lots of teams pretty much every year. It can be beneficial in the short term, but I think in the long term it's bad for a team to not have an elite player on the ice.

At some point that stops being a coincidence. When you remove a one-dimensional player from our lineup (which Tarasenko was) we generally don’t miss a beat. That’s really just a fact at this point, you can stop trying to jump through hoops to defend Tarasenko.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I myself am not necessarily defending Tarasenko. Sure, if someone is making Tarasenko out to be the bad guy and I'm saying he might not be, you can see that as defending him. But all I'm doing is putting forth other possible explanations to remind people that there isn't always just one single explanation. I'm coming at it from a neutral standpoint.

My thoughts can pretty much be summed up by the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." You know, the 'ol ice cream sales and shark attacks thing.

As far as the bolded goes, if you're implying that Tarasenko was bad for the team and that is why we played better without him, that is one possibility among many, but not "just a fact at this point."

 

[Reality Czech]

I'm not arguing whether or not the team played better with him out of the lineup, I'm simply stating the fact that we don't know WHY the team played better in those games. People could be right in saying that Tarasenko was not liked in the locker room and so the team played better when he wasn't on the ice, or that overall he was more bad than good for the team on the ice. Those are possibilities. Another possibility is that players moved into bigger roles due to injuries and wanted to play harder to impress. It could also be that lines were forced to be changed around and those new line configurations clicked, or there was a player that was in a funk and they got rejuvenated by being on a different line. These are just a couple things that could happen consistently in games where any top player is out of the lineup, and those reasons are just as likely as the one you set forth. Sometimes in short spans where a top player is out, teams play extra hard. It happens with lots of teams pretty much every year. It can be beneficial in the short term, but I think in the long term it's bad for a team to not have an elite player on the ice.


I can't speak for anyone else, but I myself am not necessarily defending Tarasenko. Sure, if someone is making Tarasenko out to be the bad guy and I'm saying he might not be, you can see that as defending him. But all I'm doing is putting forth other possible explanations to remind people that there isn't always just one single explanation. I'm coming at it from a neutral standpoint.

My thoughts can pretty much be summed up by the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." You know, the 'ol ice cream sales and shark attacks thing.

As far as the bolded goes, if you're implying that Tarasenko was bad for the team and that is why we played better without him, that is one possibility among many, but not "just a fact at this point."

Great post. I just get tired of people acting as if their opinion is fact. As you said, there are so many factors at play that it's overly simplistic to just assume things like that. When Tarasenko was injured in 19-20 the team was better as a whole compared to his early years here. Let's not forget that Tarasenko was nowhere near 100% for 2-3 years after his shoulder issues. No one complained about Tarasenko's character when he was in his prime lighting the lamp with league leaders.

I just get tired of the constant blame game. It's Krug's fault, no wait it's Tarasenko, it's the coaching. I believe in win as a team, lose as a team. I don't think one individual can have that much of an impact in a team sport like hockey. The dude had some great years here and had a big role on our cup winning team. But once he's gone people start shitting on him and coming up with these narratives that he was a shitty teammate.

Backes' quote about Tarasenko was pretty great. Most team/player relationships don't end well but it doesn't cancel out all the good things that happened before that. I can pretty much guarantee that fans are a lot more obsessed with supposed "character issues" than the players are. Fans only get a tiny glimpse behind the curtain yet act like they know everything.

 

[Mike Liut]

Tarasenko seemed like a genuine guy. I liked him when he was here. The only problem now is, he’s an ex Blue, so f*** him.

 

[Renard]

Quote from Backes:

When it comes to specific memories with him and I, he had a little bit of a learning curve coming into the league, and there was the time where I thought he was being selfish or lazy in a game. I went after him in one practice to try to send a message that that’s not acceptable for us. We got heated, but shortly after that, he came up to me and said, “I understand it.” I think the message was received, and he was a lot better after that. He was a guy that could have sulked from something like that, but he took a message and really rose to the occasion and was a superior player after that, buying into what we were doing as a team. It’s tough to have a glorious ending with any organization, where you ride out into the sunset. I don’t know what his beef was, but I think over time those thorns start to dull a bit and, for me, he’ll be remembered as a supreme talent, a supreme goal scorer, a guy who could win games for you on his own.

'We had something special': Ex-Blues share their favorite Tarasenko stories

After 11 illustrious years in St. Louis, Tarasenko has moved on, and so have the Blues. How will he be remembered?

theathletic.com

Teammates scrapping in practice isn't such a rare occurrence. These guys are intense competitors and one incident doesn't define a player or person. Willing to bet Backes and Tarasenko still respect each other. Maybe Vladi did need to grow up a bit but the same could be said of a lot of guys. Who's gonna scrap with Kyrou in practice this season to wake him up? That's the role of veteran le

Thanks for posting Backes's statement.=

 

[Brian39]

Going by the evidence we can see is not throwing him under the bus. Did the team play better the very day he was gone? Yes, yes they did. Dos that mean he was the cause of problems behind the scene? No but it means there is a possibility he was a problem.

That is a highly, highly debatable assertion.

We traded him coming out of the all star break and bye week. Our first game without him was the team's first game in 11 days and we blew a 5-2 lead in the final 11 minutes of the game on the way to a 6-5 OT win against Arizona. That game would have been one of the low points of the season if 3 on 3 hadn't gone our way. Then we beat Florida in Spencer Knight's last start before going to the player's assistance program (we scored 5 goals on 27 shots while Binner allowed 2 on 36 shots). Then we beat New Jersey 4-2 in a game where shots were even. A streak is a streak, but I'm not sure that these 3 games demonstrate that the team turned some corner. There was still plenty of 'bad' to take away from these games.

Then we lost our next 6 games to close out the month of February.

A 3 game win streak out of the all star break without Tarasenko doesn't tell me a ton. We opened the season with a 3 game win streak. We had a 7 game win streak in November. We had a 4 game win streak in December. We didn't win 3 straight again after this little streak in February. This team was streaky all year. Winning 3 then losing 6 doesn't strike me as a stark improvement the moment he was gone.

I think the evidence we can see is much murkier than you suggest about the team playing better the very day he was gone. That 3rd period implosion against Arizona in that 1st game was exactly the same team I remember watching the previous 50 games. That 6 game losing streak was right in line with the team I remember from the previous 50 games.

 

[BrokenFace]

These arguments could be used if it was just a one time thing but it wasn’t. The Blues always played well when Tarasenko was out of the lineup with his injuries. Look how good they were in 2019-2020 when he missed almost the whole season… even Perron said he thinks that team was better than the Cup team before Bouwmeester went down.

At some point that stops being a coincidence. When you remove a one-dimensional player from our lineup (which Tarasenko was) we generally don’t miss a beat. That’s really just a fact at this point, you can stop trying to jump through hoops to defend Tarasenko.

The Blues always had a deep roster while Tarasenko was here. Was there any player who we would play poorly without when they were injured? Tarasenko wasn't the only 1 dimensional player on the team. How many defense only guys have been on the team over the years? And lots of successful teams have 1 dimensional players. Most of the cup winning teams since Tarasenko entered the league had a Kane, Kessel, or Ovi who was poor defensively.

All I can say is that I'm a fan of his and have a generous view of him just like I do with Perron, Backes, Edmundson, Steen and mostly anyone else who contributed a big part of their career to making the Blues better. None of those players are perfect either on the ice or in the locker room but they all went way above and beyond in making it better to be a Blues fan, so it would take a lot for me to see them as too flawed to support or root for. Especially anyone on the cup winning team.

I'm also an unassuming person. If I don't have the evidence to believe something, I won't go out on a limb for it. It seems that a lot of fans are assuming a lot about Tarasenko to view him in a negative light. He was a great player for us who eventually asked for a trade. I ultimately don't know why but, if I had to assume, I would say it had more to do with the unsuccessful shoulder repairs than it did with not being made captain. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't change my opinion of him because he was a great player for my team and helped them lift the cup. I think other people are making much larger assumptions when they say he was a problem in the locker room, or that he was pissed about Thomas and Kyrou's contracts, or that his moping is what ruined last season, or that the team is better off without that type of player (despite him being a key part of the most successful era of this franchise). He's one of my all time favorite players and even I'm glad he's gone with how his play deteriorated last season, but it just comes off as bitter when other fans imply or outright say he wasn't that good or that his motivations are any worse than any other player.

 

[oPlaiD]

I always thought it was weird how Tarasenko came to the league after an international tourney where his Russian teammates called him "best captain in my life" because he played hard and came through in the clutch despite broken ribs that his coach thought would make him unable to play, yet was suddenly labelled this prima donna once he put on the Blues uniform.

Obviously he couldn't be that player every game and he did seem to have some issues keeping max intensity at times, as evidenced by the Backes quote, but I really feel

I think he's a guy who just naturally looks surly and pouty and that made it easy to project those feelings onto him. I'm sure he really felt those things about his situation at times, but certainly not in the way fans portray. And I doubt it was infecting the locker room.

Anyway, as Backes said, time will dull the thorns. Right now we're still acutely feeling the pain of one of our worst season in over a decade and Tarasenko was a part of that, but in a few more years I think the general feeling towards Tarasenko will be positive.

Though maybe... we may need to wait for a few years after he's actually retired. If he scores 40 goals for Ottawa this year and they somehow in the Cup or something... xD

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

I hope the Blues score 10 goals every game but still go 0-82.

Sign me up for what would be the more likely result if we scored 10 goals a game.

 

[stlbluz]

Sign me up for what would be the more likely result if we scored 10 goals a game.

A lot of FA goalies around the league?