We are watching something really exciting. We are watching a mature beyond his years 21 year old kid establish a team identity going forward. This team goes to the net, directly. The Neighbourhood. Mr. Jake's Neighbourhood. As a culture. It will grow and build, because it is infectious. That is a winning hockey culture. Thomas-Neighbours has a sort of Federko-Sutter combo to it. There aren't routine fights like there were and those players aren't the same age like Federko-Sutter, but the identity of the offense went through those guys. Bernie wasn't a roughhouser but Sutter just wanted his team to god damn win and would get in there and go after it. He overperformed his talent just like Jake is going to do.
Huge mea culpa because I saw him as more expendable before this year, would have packaged him (for a top pair defenseman, which is still a need) but now he is untradeable. As he just said in intermission 1, he was more of a perimeter player in junior but he has taken the old school Schenn mantle right up. Very impressed with this, and it's crucial that the young talent coming right behind him up front see that and understand they can be part of it and succeed.
They have a mess on D still but Kessel is a bigger help than people realize yet. If they could fix it in a larger way, they could be 3 seasons away from contending (aka making playoffs with real optimism), which is way sooner than I personally expected. Biggest if, ever. But credit Jake Neighbours with a huge portion of that optimism because that aspect is going to be necessary to contend and the Blues have gotten really lucky with this.