2024-2025 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread.

[BadgersandBlues]

Cool vid I found of Elliott working with the goalies a bit at Development camp, thought I'd share:

 

[shpongle falls]

Cool vid I found of Elliott working with the goalies a bit at Development camp, thought I'd share:

Just watched this wish it was longer, i love getting insight like this.

 

[Xerloris]

We wasted an entire core trying to find that #1C. Maybe people forget that part. And when we finally got one it only lasted a couple years. Thankfully we got to the promised land in that small window.

The reason that core was wasted is because that was the core. You were never going to win if that was your core. They were great players but that can't be your core if you want to win a cup.

 

[Celtic Note]

The reason that core was wasted is because that was the core. You were never going to win if that was your core. They were great players but that can't be your core if you want to win a cup.

So we can believe we will find core pieces for this core but it wasn’t reasonable to expect that for that one?

 

[Fez Whatley]

The Backes core could never get over the hump largely due to the lack of 1C and scoring. It took going through that whole core and moving onto the next before we ever solved that 1C problem.

When was that core only a 1c away from contending? They also had Jackman, polak, Elliot, berglund, lehtera, CPR line, mps, etc. They were not just a 1c away from a cup. The '19 blues were slowly built and improved on post Backes core. Parayko, Dunn, eddy, sunny, barbie, etc were not good enough during Backes time on the blues. That crazy deep cup winning team had really only two weaknesses keeping them from winning it all : 1c (O'Reilly) and goalie (WINNINGTON).

I'm not really even defending army. What I am trying to point out is that there is a lot of time to sort out roster issues. This team is not a 1d away from contending. Our promising prospects need time to develop, the whole defense needs to be addressed, they have to get more than one scoring line, there has got to be more depth throughout the lineup.

I understand Parayko, schenn and buch may age out and not be big factors or even on the team when they're contending again. Hopefully one of them will be in the Steen role. The main thing is this: there are many reasons why this isn't a contending team and while 1d is the most obvious, it isn't the only thing keeping them away. It's gonna take time and maybe some more 4-2 1st round series losses.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Just in case any of you were planning to come up to Chicago in October to catch a Blues game, you'll have to travel a bit further north.



Edit: Preseason, not regular season.

 

[SirPaste]

Just in case any of you were planning to come up to Chicago in October to catch a Blues game, you'll have to travel a bit further north.

I'm actually really pumped about this, got a lot of friends in MKE and gives me a great reason for a visit

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I'm actually really pumped about this, got a lot of friends in MKE and gives me a great reason for a visit

Apparently only a preseason game, misread the schedule.

 

[Xerloris]

So we can believe we will find core pieces for this core but it wasn’t reasonable to expect that for that one?

This core has high end skill where as Backes, Oshie and Steen did not. Also, they were all slow.

 

[MissouriMook]

Cool vid I found of Elliott working with the goalies a bit at Development camp, thought I'd share:

I’ve actually got a cameo in that video (in the stands) around the 2:41 mark.

 

[Drubilly]

I’ve actually got a cameo in that video (in the stands) around the 2:41 mark.

I'm trying to pick out the 7 footer but I don't see ya.

 

[MissouriMook]

I'm trying to pick out the 7 footer but I don't see ya.

Well I'm sitting down, so that makes it a little tougher.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

Well I'm sitting down, so that makes it a little tougher.

View attachment 894471

I don't believe you, that looks nothing like your Profile Avatar

 

[Brian39]

So we can believe we will find core pieces for this core but it wasn’t reasonable to expect that for that one?

No, people are saying that we didn't go out and acquire core pieces in an area of need, not that it would have been unreasonable to do so.

The conversation here was about turning surplus futures assets into established players of positional need. That's what we did in 2017 and 2018 during our '1 step back for 2 steps forward retool' to get Schenn and ROR (plus UFA Bozak) to rebuild the center group.

Prior to that, we did almost nothing to supplement our core with top of the lineup players in areas of positional need.

We didn't do anything to try and find better centers to support that core from 2010/11 through 2013/14 beyond simply developing from within. Our centers in 2010/11 were a 26 year old Backes, a 22 year old Bergie, a 27 year old McClement, a 23 year old Sobotka, and a 33 year old MacDonald. The following year, McClement was gone, MacDonald only played 25 games and we replaced them with a 37 year old Arnott and a 37 year old Nichol. No new centers were brought in for 2013. In 2013/14, we brought in Lapierre, Roy, and Ott to play center in the bottom of the lineup.

That's a 4 year window where we said "this center core plus time is good enough." We were very much not trying to find core pieces at the center position. Any 'wasted' time was based on incorrectly assessing our own young centers, not on the fact that we brought in inadequate replacements.

I think we all agree that doing nothing to our D group for several more years is not going to build a good enough group. No one here is advocating to apply the 2010 through 2014 center plan to the current D group.

By 2014, it became clear that we needed more/better centers and we actually started addressing it. We signed Stastny and made 2 runs with Backes/Stastny down the middle. We won the central in year 1 and lost to the Wild in round 1 in a series where Allen was widely blamed. We got to the Conference Final the next season. The group fell short, but it was a pretty damn good team.

Then we let Backes walk in the summer of 2016 and Shatty is moved mid-season in 2016/17. Army starts describing the process as a 'step back to take 2 steps forward' retool. We flip futures for Schenn in 2017, flip Stastny at the deadline in 2017/18 and then flip more futures for ROR in the summer of 2018. We also signed Bozak the same day. Center group fixed.

Schenn was the very first time we attempted to address the center group by trading futures for an established player in his mid 20s. 13 months later the center group was fixed. Any wasted core was the result of not actively trying to bring in replacements that matched a young/growing core's timeframe. "We didn't try to do it" is a hell of a lot different than "we tried and failed to do it."

 

[STL fan in MN]

Just in case any of you were planning to come up to Chicago in October to catch a Blues game, you'll have to travel a bit further north.



Edit: Preseason, not regular season.

Well then…

Milwaukee’s only 3 hours away for me so…I’ll just be over here trying to come up with some sort of valid reasoning to convince my wife we need to go to Milwaukee that weekend.

 

[BadgersandBlues]

No, people are saying that we didn't go out and acquire core pieces in an area of need, not that it would have been unreasonable to do so.

The conversation here was about turning surplus futures assets into established players of positional need. That's what we did in 2017 and 2018 during our '1 step back for 2 steps forward retool' to get Schenn and ROR (plus UFA Bozak) to rebuild the center group.

Prior to that, we did almost nothing to supplement our core with top of the lineup players in areas of positional need.

We didn't do anything to try and find better centers to support that core from 2010/11 through 2013/14 beyond simply developing from within. Our centers in 2010/11 were a 26 year old Backes, a 22 year old Bergie, a 27 year old McClement, a 23 year old Sobotka, and a 33 year old MacDonald. The following year, McClement was gone, MacDonald only played 25 games and we replaced them with a 37 year old Arnott and a 37 year old Nichol. No new centers were brought in for 2013. In 2013/14, we brought in Lapierre, Roy, and Ott to play center in the bottom of the lineup.

That's a 4 year window where we said "this center core plus time is good enough." We were very much not trying to find core pieces at the center position. Any 'wasted' time was based on incorrectly assessing our own young centers, not on the fact that we brought in inadequate replacements.

I think we all agree that doing nothing to our D group for several more years is not going to build a good enough group. No one here is advocating to apply the 2010 through 2014 center plan to the current D group.

By 2014, it became clear that we needed more/better centers and we actually started addressing it. We signed Stastny and made 2 runs with Backes/Stastny down the middle. We won the central in year 1 and lost to the Wild in round 1 in a series where Allen was widely blamed. We got to the Conference Final the next season. The group fell short, but it was a pretty damn good team.

Then we let Backes walk in the summer of 2016 and Shatty is moved mid-season in 2016/17. Army starts describing the process as a 'step back to take 2 steps forward' retool. We flip futures for Schenn in 2017, flip Stastny at the deadline in 2017/18 and then flip more futures for ROR in the summer of 2018. We also signed Bozak the same day. Center group fixed.

Schenn was the very first time we attempted to address the center group by trading futures for an established player in his mid 20s. 13 months later the center group was fixed. Any wasted core was the result of not actively trying to bring in replacements that matched a young/growing core's timeframe. "We didn't try to do it" is a hell of a lot different than "we tried and failed to do it."

Man that team in 2014/2015 was so much better then people realize imo - if Allen hadn't shat the bed I think we may have gone pretty deep. We finally looked like we had a legit top 6 in Backes/Stastny/Steen/Oshie/Taraskeno/Schwartz. Then on the back end we had AP/Shatty/JBow/Jackman as our top 4. Honestly really not bad.

 

[Brian39]

Man that team in 2014/2015 was so much better then people realize imo - if Allen hadn't shat the bed I think we may have gone pretty deep. We finally looked like we had a legit top 6 in Backes/Stastny/Steen/Oshie/Taraskeno/Schwartz. Then on the back end we had AP/Shatty/JBow/Jackman as our top 4. Honestly really not bad.

The 2 goals he allowed in game 6 were the definition of back breakers and he deserves his share of the blame for us ultimately losing that series. But he also allowed 2 or fewer goals in 5 of the 6 games and had a .935 through game 4. The wheels came off at the end, but it isn't like he was a disaster all series while the team in front dominated.

We scored 4 total goals in the 4 losses (2, 0, 1, and 1). In game 1, we didn't score the 2nd goal until after Minnesota added an empty netter to make it 3-1 with about 1:15 left. We scored a very funny shorthanded goal with 1 minute left to make it 3-2, then they added another empty netter to hand Allen a 4-2 loss in a game where he allowed 2 goals.

You can't blame the goalie alone when every loss would have required him to allow 1 or fewer goals just to get to OT. Again, Allen very much deserved blame in that series, especially with the 2 he gave up in game 6. But that group went ice cold (except for Tarasenko) and wasn't looking poised for a deep run if Allen had outdueled Dubnyk and gotten them out of round 1. That team had the talent, but looked disjointed in that series beyond the goaltending.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

I remember going into that series feeling like we were going to have our hands full. If I remember right, Minnesota had gone something like 25-10 down the stretch that season. Made the Blues look like a paper tiger in that series.

 

[Xerloris]

You can't blame the goalie alone when every loss would have required him to allow 1 or fewer goals just to get to OT. Again, Allen very much deserved blame in that series, especially with the 2 he gave up in game 6. But that group went ice cold (except for Tarasenko) and wasn't looking poised for a deep run if Allen had outdueled Dubnyk and gotten them out of round 1. That team had the talent, but looked disjointed in that series beyond the goaltending.

You can blame the goalie when the goals they give up are absolute bullshit. Not saying every goal in that series he let in was that but he sure did kill our momentum many times.

 

[Celtic Note]

No, people are saying that we didn't go out and acquire core pieces in an area of need, not that it would have been unreasonable to do so.

The conversation here was about turning surplus futures assets into established players of positional need. That's what we did in 2017 and 2018 during our '1 step back for 2 steps forward retool' to get Schenn and ROR (plus UFA Bozak) to rebuild the center group.

Prior to that, we did almost nothing to supplement our core with top of the lineup players in areas of positional need.

We didn't do anything to try and find better centers to support that core from 2010/11 through 2013/14 beyond simply developing from within. Our centers in 2010/11 were a 26 year old Backes, a 22 year old Bergie, a 27 year old McClement, a 23 year old Sobotka, and a 33 year old MacDonald. The following year, McClement was gone, MacDonald only played 25 games and we replaced them with a 37 year old Arnott and a 37 year old Nichol. No new centers were brought in for 2013. In 2013/14, we brought in Lapierre, Roy, and Ott to play center in the bottom of the lineup.

That's a 4 year window where we said "this center core plus time is good enough." We were very much not trying to find core pieces at the center position. Any 'wasted' time was based on incorrectly assessing our own young centers, not on the fact that we brought in inadequate replacements.

I think we all agree that doing nothing to our D group for several more years is not going to build a good enough group. No one here is advocating to apply the 2010 through 2014 center plan to the current D group.

By 2014, it became clear that we needed more/better centers and we actually started addressing it. We signed Stastny and made 2 runs with Backes/Stastny down the middle. We won the central in year 1 and lost to the Wild in round 1 in a series where Allen was widely blamed. We got to the Conference Final the next season. The group fell short, but it was a pretty damn good team.

Then we let Backes walk in the summer of 2016 and Shatty is moved mid-season in 2016/17. Army starts describing the process as a 'step back to take 2 steps forward' retool. We flip futures for Schenn in 2017, flip Stastny at the deadline in 2017/18 and then flip more futures for ROR in the summer of 2018. We also signed Bozak the same day. Center group fixed.

Schenn was the very first time we attempted to address the center group by trading futures for an established player in his mid 20s. 13 months later the center group was fixed. Any wasted core was the result of not actively trying to bring in replacements that matched a young/growing core's timeframe. "We didn't try to do it" is a hell of a lot different than "we tried and failed to do it."

What I am saying is if people think it’s reasonable to assume we will address our problems now, then why didn’t we address the major problem we had back then. And, why did it take so damn long? And why do we think it will happen now? And how long into this core will it take? Or will it take or preceding core before it happens like last time?

Is “we didn’t try” better than “we tied and failed”? It may different from the standpoint of effort but a failure is a failure. If you didn’t realize what you needed, you failed in your assessment and I’m not getting the player. If you tried and failed, you still didnt get the player. At least on the, we tried front, you can say we made an effort.

Regardless, we still wasted that core by not significantly improving it and the most glaring need was a #1C. We tried to do it by adding a second #2C, which really felt like much too little and obviously too late when it happened. We should have known by 2012 that we didn’t have high enough quality centers unless we think it was still time needed to give Berglund to morph into that guy. But, 2013 is the absolute latest I would push that date. We didn’t resolve the issue till 2018. So 5-6 years later.

As to whether the #1C would have been the silver bullet? Who knows. Probably depends on the center and what else we did. I do have a great degree of confidence that Backes would have been tremendous in a #2C roll. He was miscast for years. Our scoring in the playoffs was not adequate. Adding 1C would have helped our top 6 significantly from an offensive perspective and allowed us to deploy better matchups in the playoffs and better slot players in appropriate positions. Just adding that #1C takes those Backes teams from pretender to contender. Maybe not high probability contender but certainly better than the Cinderella hopes from back then.

Going back to the not addressing the gap, if we look at how we tried to plug that hole we see something similar with the one we have now. We said good players will be good enough. So in come Faulk and Krug. We add some bracing when we need a foundation pier.

I still am not even sure if we fully realize we need a top end #1D. I mean most of our fans do, but our last target was Sanheim, who to me is better suited as a #2 on a contender. Maybe that was the intent, but I don’t see anything on the top end #1D front. Regardless, here we sit 4 years later from that problem arising. We are still waiting. Now, if Army didn’t believe we have to be competitive nearly all the time to be viable, it wouldn’t be such a pressing issue. But the Blues want to rush through this as quickly as possible. So the onus is on building a contender quickly.

My question is how long will it take this time to address our main issue and will we try patching the hole with an inferior player once again or we pull off another ROR trade (which I really don’t think happens all that often for the level of defensemen we need). Will it happen in Thomas and Kyrou’s prime or will this be the Backes core again?

We need the 2017-2018 Army back. We don’t need all the rest of the time with the I only make hockey trades and the let’s stick with what we have and the let’s spend to the cap with a bunch of filler. Will we get that brilliant Army in the next two years or the underwhelming one who tinkers?

Man that team in 2014/2015 was so much better then people realize imo - if Allen hadn't shat the bed I think we may have gone pretty deep. We finally looked like we had a legit top 6 in Backes/Stastny/Steen/Oshie/Taraskeno/Schwartz. Then on the back end we had AP/Shatty/JBow/Jackman as our top 4. Honestly really not bad.

just imagine a #1C instead of Stastny.

 

[TheOrganist]

You can blame the goalie when the goals they give up are absolute bullshit. Not saying every goal in that series he let in was that but he sure did kill our momentum many times.

I was at Game 1 and I remember Zucker? (I think) scoring about 3 mins into the first period on what should have been a harmless wrap around that Allen played so poorly…I remember thinking right then we’re F’d.

 

[bleedblue1223]

Can't remember all the old C targets, but we luckily failed on Weiss.

 

[Celtic Note]

Can't remember all the old C targets, but we luckily failed on Weiss.

It may very well be a blessing given who we targeted.

 

[bleedblue1223]

And the same summer we got Stastny, we were pushing for Spezza too. That might have made a difference for that core. Spezza with prime Tarasenko would've been nice.

 

[PocketNines]

And for supposedly all those years we had no centers, we did have a #1D good enough to peg the franchise as the winningest regular season team in the West for the whole decade. It was so obvious what gave them a chance to contend. Pure steady high IQ excellence shift in and shift out from the team's highest minutes player.

I do not find it acceptable at all for this to have not been appreciated while it was happening, because we talked about it a lot while it was happening. I know people have terrible memories, but damn