2023-2024 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread

[Ted Hoffman]

Say what you want about it, arguably the most important thing about success in the postseason is getting to the postseason. Without continued winning in the regular season, the point is moot.

Well, yes - there's that, but I think people really overestimate the idea of "just get to the playoffs and anything can happen." People remember the 1st round upsets and the Kings going to the Cup in 2012 as an 8-seed; they forget how most of the playoffs tends to be chalk, especially after you get beyond the 1st round. This isn't 1990-type stuff every year where Minnesota drags itself over the finish line with 68 points, then knocks off 3 100-point teams on the way to the Finals.

And no, please do not bring up 2019. That 98-point Blues team went into the playoffs nothing like a mere 98-point, "we're good enough to get in but need a miracle run" team of most years. Everyone here knows it, don't undersell what that team was going into Game 1 of the Winnipeg series.

If "just get to the playoffs, hope for a miracle" is the plan, .... OK. I can go with it. Going to fail more often than not, might as well do the "wish with one hand, shit in the other" thing too, but I guess that plan is better than nothing.

Also, besides the Blues and Bruins, the rest of the winning teams in the 2010s had undoubtedly elite talents in their positions back-boning their runs. Kane Toews, Hossa, Kopitar, Doughty, Quick, Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Ovechkin, Backstrom, Kucherov, Stamkos, Hedman, Vasilevskiy. The Blues MAYBE had two in Petro and Tarasenko (O'Reilly in his first appearance with the Blues), but Tarasenko was not the prime version we saw against Chicago and our deep run that ended against San Jose. So for a mid market team drafting in the mid-late 20s nearly every year, I'd say the job was done well. The team was never going to be elite without incredible drafting, great trades, or tanking for a few top 5/10 picks yet we still have a championship.

Isn't that the GM's job, though? Isn't the GM supposed to recognize those gaps and fill them in? What I'm reading here is "made a whole bunch of trades, won a shitload of them, ... we still shit bricks in the playoffs because he still didn't really upgrade the talent level enough" especially since he was gifted a pretty healthy talent base to start. He made a bunch of moves to get the team to the playoffs, did window dressing around the team's real needs and never adequately addressed those, and hoped for a miracle run once we got there. I guess it's a plan, just one that's not going to be a successful plan most years and relies on a lot of luck at some point.

 

[ezcreepin]

Well, yes - there's that, but I think people really overestimate the idea of "just get to the playoffs and anything can happen." People remember the 1st round upsets and the Kings going to the Cup in 2012 as an 8-seed; they forget how most of the playoffs tends to be chalk, especially after you get beyond the 1st round. This isn't 1990-type stuff every year where Minnesota drags itself over the finish line with 68 points, then knocks off 3 100-point teams on the way to the Finals.

And no, please do not bring up 2019. That 98-point Blues team went into the playoffs nothing like a mere 98-point, "we're good enough to get in but need a miracle run" team of most years. Everyone here knows it, don't undersell what that team was going into Game 1 of the Winnipeg series.

If "just get to the playoffs, hope for a miracle" is the plan, .... OK. I can go with it. Going to fail more often than not, might as well do the "wish with one hand, shit in the other" thing too, but I guess that plan is better than nothing.


Isn't that the GM's job, though? Isn't the GM supposed to recognize those gaps and fill them in? What I'm reading here is "made a whole bunch of trades, won a shitload of them, ... we still shit bricks in the playoffs because he still didn't really upgrade the talent level enough" especially since he was gifted a pretty healthy talent base to start. He made a bunch of moves to get the team to the playoffs, did window dressing around the team's real needs and never adequately addressed those, and hoped for a miracle run once we got there. I guess it's a plan, just one that's not going to be a successful plan most years and relies on a lot of luck at some point.

I'm not going to pretend the the team was head and shoulders the top dog every year to win the cup when they clearly weren't. 2012 no, 2013 no, 2014 you're starting to get close, etc etc. I agree with you that despite their record, they maybe weren't the clear favorite, but hockey is a game of luck along with skill, and they had skill to compete with most teams. Do you agree with that?

I'm not underselling the 2019 team. They were absolutely stacked by both getting luck and smart in drafting and trades and I would argue that the 2018 team should have had a better fate than missing the postseason. I'm not sure anyone here is going to poo poo the idea that 2019 was undoubtedly the best Blues team that's been assembled both in skill and compete. That much is clear.

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. Armstrong made the team competitive almost every year during the 2010s and the team couldn't step up. Maybe under different coaching the story is different, but they were talented enough to fight against the absurd Hawks and Kings in their heyday, but they also showed how green they were. It's tough to overcome that until you win and I don't know how you solve that (just look at the Leafs). I suspect if we were in person discussing this we'd find more common ground than we do disagree.

The point is that winning in this league is very hard. Plenty of the best teams ever didn't win, just see the Bruins last year and the crazy 62 win Tampa team. Even with the best talent you can get bounced and it is what it is. I think it's fair to say Armstrong thought the team was good enough to compete in the playoffs without jeopardizing draft stock or players/prospects, but the real big trades he made were the EJ trade, Bouw trade, Miller trade, Schenn trade, and O'Reilly trade. In context they all make a bit of sense, but of the 5 I've listed, 3 of them worked for us. You can make an argument that there are a few more big trades, but those were pretty significant here. Idk my brain is fried right now and I'm trying to argue my side but I can't so this is what I'm sending right now lmao

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I'm not going to pretend the the team was head and shoulders the top dog every year to win the cup when they clearly weren't. 2012 no, 2013 no, 2014 you're starting to get close, etc etc. I agree with you that despite their record, they maybe weren't the clear favorite, but hockey is a game of luck along with skill, and they had skill to compete with most teams. Do you agree with that?

I agree that hockey is a game of skill, they had the skill to compete with most teams (but not the elite teams), and that luck gets you so far - but, it shouldn't be counted on as the failsafe to bridging a skill gap between you and the elite teams in the league.

I'm not underselling the 2019 team. They were absolutely stacked by both getting luck and smart in drafting and trades and I would argue that the 2018 team should have had a better fate than missing the postseason. I'm not sure anyone here is going to poo poo the idea that 2019 was undoubtedly the best Blues team that's been assembled both in skill and compete. That much is clear.

That's not what I mean by underselling the team. It was not just a 98-point team going into the playoffs. It was a lot better than that. But it absolutely relied on luck getting to the point where it was rolling like it did, because the original plan didn't have Craig Berube as the head coach or Jordan Binnington on the roster. All the smart drafting and great trades didn't fix the fact that we went into that season with the same shitty head coach and the same unreliable #1 in net [and an even more unreliable back-up to the #1], and that all was because of the decisions made by one person.

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. Armstrong made the team competitive almost every year during the 2010s and the team couldn't step up. Maybe under different coaching the story is different, but they were talented enough to fight against the absurd Hawks and Kings in their heyday, but they also showed how green they were.

Wait, I thought we lacked the talent. No one questioned whether we could fight against the top teams in a single game; we questioned whether it was good enough to do it for 7 games, or 7 games x2. How much more was coaching going to squeeze out of that talent?

It's tough to overcome that until you win and I don't know how you solve that (just look at the Leafs). I suspect if we were in person discussing this we'd find more common ground than we do disagree.

I think you're right, and maybe I'm really splitting hairs [which, OK, I do that quite a bit], but I also hate hindsight wishcasting. It's making ton of assumptions that can't be proven, assuming they're true, and then drawing "obvious" conclusions from there. I prefer to stick to the facts that we have, that actually occurred, and drawing conclusions from that.

Re: Leafs - I've opined on this on the main forum. The problem with the Leafs is the same problem the Oilers have: it's a top-heavy team where 4-6 players are carrying the load and it's hoping the rest of the roster doesn't f*** up too much when those 4-6 guys need a breather. It's a bottom-6 that's barely NHL-level and at least 2 defensemen who are barely NHL-level. A good goalie will help some, but ultimately you're asking that goalie to bail the team out way too often / asking those top 4-6 players to produce a shitton of goals to make up for the stress the goalie is going to have the rest of the time.

And I think Edmonton is [slightly] better than people think - I love Bouchard on defense, think he's still vastly underrated across the league - but it's also paying a guy who should be a 2nd pairing defenseman $9.25M per, and has a bottom-6 that I'd take a bottom 6 of Kapanen, Toropchenko, Alexandrov, MacEachern, Blais and McGing over. Until that team gets better balance across the roster, especially across the forward lines - which means it's not spending $52.7M on 8 guys, not including Draisaitl (UFA) and Bouchard (RFA) after 2024-25, and not including whatever it may have to carry with Jack Campbell's current albatross of a contract - it's not getting any better.

 

[TheOrganist]

Ted Hoffman is the old Irish Blues, correct? He’s the only other regular poster who used italics, underline, bold font, quotations and brackets in 98% of his posts.

 

[Thallis]

That's 5-6 years out. [OK, nitpicking: 5.5 years for Thomas, 4.33 years for Kyrou before each turns 30 - and then add on from there as needed.] If we don't have the pieces to be competitive until then, the current GM will be (better be) long gone. And, it will mean we've overrated the guys (forwards) we have in the prospect pipeline, which might be a stronger argument for the current GM being gone.

And I guess the question I have comes back to what do you mean by they're declining? Do they have to be PPG forwards? If they're merely 70-point guys but will be for a couple more years and then slowing into the 60s, upper 50s by the time they're 33-34, is that still OK? Or are you thinking they're going to hit 30, 31 and be merely 55-point guys, tailing off every year from there? Because a lot of assumptions about what to do in the future relies on what you think guys are going to do over the next 3, 4, 5, 6 years so you know what decisions you want to be making now in anticipation of that.

If we are expecting them to be the first line players and are hinging playoff hopes on that, being 50-60 point players aren't going to cut it. We'd be hinging a lot on Dvorsky and Snuggerud replacing what they provide now if that were the case.

I don't know what the future brings, but I do know we shouldn't be shooting to have the best version of our "next" roster be about the one that wasn't good enough 2 years ago. That's kind of how I view where we would be if we are consistently in that range. Players like Thomas & Kyrou will be around where ROR and Schenn were in their careers at that point.

You're probably right in that there's too many variables to adequately plan that out, but the top talent we need to overcome that roster's ceiling is rarely available anywhere but the top of the draft. We have a good track record, but we're not infallible and still have yet to draft & develop a world class player from beyond the top 5.

 

[jura]

MacEachern assigned to Springfield
Walker recalled from Springfield

 

[ScratchCatFever]

people keep complaining about krug ntc, but he has been pretty good this year. and by him blocking trade we were able to keep our last 1st and pick lindstein, who i think will be a key part of d. so sanheim woulda been nice, but theo might be even better. and it's not like we were gonna be great if we dealt krug.

He's doing nothing but increasing his value with his play. I don't understand why people are in a rush to move him. The contract will be easier to offload with one less year on it and could be of more value if he finishes with a strong campaign.

 

[ScratchCatFever]

Is Alexandrov injured or just not showing enough to get himself out of the press box? If it's the ladder, that's a bit disappointing, as many were looking for him to take that next step and assert himself as a regular in the bottom six.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Is Alexandrov injured or just not showing enough to get himself out of the press box? If it's the ladder, that's a bit disappointing, as many were looking for him to take that next step and assert himself as a regular in the bottom six.

Haven’t heard anything about injury..

 

[ScratchCatFever]

Haven’t heard anything about injury..

Same. A bit concerning considering Vrana stayed ahead of him before being waived and Mac and Walker have had recent call-ups over the last couple weeks.

 

[Louie the Blue]

i don't disagree, i just think lots of folks are so over krug that they act like sanheim would solve so many of our problems. he doesn't. he is more of a sure thing as top 4 guy than lindstein bc he is already doing it, but it's certainly possible this works out for us is all i'm saying. lindstein is heckuva consolation prize.

I don’t mind Krug and was fine with Armstrong signing him.

However, his contract combined with Scandella being paid and played in a role he shouldn’t be in, Perunovich’s and Walman’s stagnation to develop defensively, and the overall failure of the defense to play well collectively (majority of this blame is on the defensemen while forwards deserved blame as well) for the better part of 3-4 seasons (2021-2022 still had problems defensively leading to Leddy being brought in) exacerbates Krug’s limitations for a defense that is already super flawed.

 

[STL fan in MN]

Is Alexandrov injured or just not showing enough to get himself out of the press box? If it's the ladder, that's a bit disappointing, as many were looking for him to take that next step and assert himself as a regular in the bottom six.

He’s just been healthy scratched. At this point, I think I’d rather they risk losing him on waivers and try to send him to the AHL. Continually sitting isn’t doing him any favors.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

MacEachern assigned to Springfield
Walker recalled from Springfield

No McGing?!

 

[jura]

you should ask Army that

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

No McGing?!

he didn't really show much while up. i'm fine with cycling on through these seemingly marginal guys to see if any can stick, although i doubt any will.

 

[MissouriMook]

he didn't really show much while up. i'm fine with cycling on through these seemingly marginal guys to see if any can stick, although i doubt any will.

It will be interesting to see if Vrana gets a call up. I haven’t seen anything more than box scores - he is producing, but is he getting better away from the puck? If we continue to see, and eventually hear, positive stuff about his play but he never gets brought back up, then it would seem likely that there are some off ice issues. Still, why remove a bad apple from your team and send him to work with your young players? Wouldn’t a termination make more sense if the conduct was bad enough? So many unanswered questions.

 

[Stealth JD]

Ted Hoffman is the old Irish Blues, correct? He’s the only other regular poster who used italics, underline, bold font, quotations and brackets in 98% of his posts.

Yep

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Ted Hoffman is the old Irish Blues, correct? He’s the only other regular poster who used italics, underline, bold font, quotations and brackets in 98% of his posts.

I need to clip a GIF where Don Cherry salutes the crowd, so I can have it for moments like this.

 

[simon IC]

No McGing?!

Imagine Walker, McGing and Perunovich all up? The St Louis Smurfs!

 

[joe galiba]

Imagine Walker, McGing and Perunovich all up? The St Louis Smurfs!

Why are you dissing Krug?

 

[Spektre]

I agree that Schenn hasn't been able to do much this year. But part of that is his line mates. To be frank, we have all of our top guys playing on the first line so he is stuck with players that are really 3rd liners. They are playing good defensive hockey, but man they are not offering much offensively.

He looked much better with Hayes and Kyrou that short time they played together. His line is a cycle line. Add to the fact that the PP has really struggled, and you get a guy underperforming.

Moving this out of the draft thread.

For me, it's frustrating watching Schenn. He makes too many mistakes, and he doesn't do enough to drive offense. I'm not focusing on his line mates. My focus is on him and he's not doing his line mates any favors.

 

[STL fan in MN]

Moving this out of the draft thread.

For me, it's frustrating watching Schenn. He makes too many mistakes, and he doesn't do enough to drive offense. I'm not focusing on his line mates. My focus is on him and he's not doing his line mates any favors.

Schenn has been bad this season. Love the guy and have no issues with him as Captain but it’s pretty undeniable he’s been well short of his usual self on the ice.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

Vrana recalled, Faulk placed on IR | St. Louis Blues

Nikita Alexandrov has been assigned to Springfield for conditioning

www.nhl.com

 

[Quaz]

Vrana recalled, Faulk placed on IR | St. Louis Blues

Nikita Alexandrov has been assigned to Springfield for conditioning

www.nhl.com

Looks like Vrana will not be in the lineup tonight.

 

[Brian39]

Nice to get Alexandrov some AHL time without risking waivers. He can't sit in the press box all year.

From the outside looking in, it appears Vrana did what was asked of him in the AHL. I'm interested to see what Bannister wants to do with him in the NHL. I have to believe this is Vrana's last chance to earn an NHL contract for next year. Here's hoping that Bannister wipes the slate clean., Vrana takes it seriously and he can start burying pucks if/when he gets back in the lineup.