2024-2025 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread.

[Bye Bye Blueston]

HockeyViz does NOT have much faith in the Blues this season:

View attachment 911098

Here's their full season preview:

Season Preview 24-25


That would mean we burned them 2x in one offseason.

This model looks worse than Dom’s!

 

[Brian39]

FWIW, HockeyViz pegged us at 87 points last year and correctly projected 13 of the 16 playoff teams (they had New Jersey, Minnesota, and Calgary in with Vancouver, Washington, and Nashville out). They correctly predicted the worst 6 teams in hockey, although they had them in a different order. Like most models, there are some individual things that look absurd as a single data point, but last year's projections were decent vs the results of the season.

Their D valuation looks as bad as every other public model's does. Perunovich has the most positive impact of all our D and Gudas, Severson, and Gustafson are all top 25 D men in the league. I still haven't seen a model that is both good at evaluating D and predicting team results.

All in all, their model is projecting a big improvement from the bottom of the league. Last year they had 7 teams with an average point total below 83, with San Jose and Chicago tied for worst at 76. This year's just has us and Chicago below 83 tied for last at 81. While I'm not expecting us to be a bottom 2 team in the league, I do agree that the truly terrible teams from last year should be much closer to competency this season.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

HockeyViz does NOT have much faith in the Blues this season:

View attachment 911098

Here's their full season preview:

Season Preview 24-25


That would mean we burned them 2x in one offseason.

I welcome stuff like this.

I expect the Blues to be more competitive, but I wouldn't be horribly disappointed if the wheels inexplicably fell off and we ended up with a top 2-3 pick. I think that's probably the Blues last crack at a high draft pick in a long while.

 

[Reality Czech]

I would sort of chuckle if Edmonton plucked Alexandrov off waivers.

A spite claim? Do it, Stan.

 

[Blanick]

HockeyViz does NOT have much faith in the Blues this season:

View attachment 911098

Here's their full season preview:

Season Preview 24-25


That would mean we burned them 2x in one offseason.

Its kind of weird. Almost all the analytics guys are picking us to finish in bottom 5. Meanwhile I have listened to way too many standings prediction hockey podcast the past month and the consensus is that we are a stronger team than we were last season. We barely missed the playoffs last season. The truth is nobody really seems to have a strong read on this team. I think it was the Spittin Chicklets podcast where someone said they would be surprised to see the Blues win the central but wouldn't be surprised to see us land anywhere from 2nd or 3rd all the way to dead last.

Edit: I will also point out that the Blues have consistently outperformed advanced statistic models the past few years, whether it be standings or playoff matchups. I am convinced it is why Dom from The Athletic hates us. I remember when we beat the Wild in the first round a few years back and Dom was flabbergasted as to how because his model had something like 96% chance for the Wild to win.

 

[Celtic Note]

That would mean we burned them 2x in one offseason.

Exactly!

 

[HighNote]

I'm trying to imagine all of the things that would have to happen for us to end up in last place.

 

[Thallis]

I'm trying to imagine all of the things that would have to happen for us to end up in last place.

It's really not that much. If Broberg isn't an NHL player, Neighbours shoots under 10%, and Binnington is just average we're close. Throw in any real injury to the top 3 forwards and that's really all that needs to happen. You scoring depth is tremendously thin and Parayko is our only top pairing D.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

I'm trying to imagine all of the things that would have to happen for us to end up in last place.

Agreed. I don’t expect us to make playoffs, but expecting us to be worst team in league is odd. Even more odd than projecting Canes as top team in league.

 

[Davimir Tarablad]

Its kind of weird. Almost all the analytics guys are picking us to finish in bottom 5. Meanwhile I have listened to way too many standings prediction hockey podcast the past month and the consensus is that we are a stronger team than we were last season. We barely missed the playoffs last season. The truth is nobody really seems to have a strong read on this team. I think it was the Spittin Chicklets podcast where someone said they would be surprised to see the Blues win the central but wouldn't be surprised to see us land anywhere from 2nd or 3rd all the way to dead last.

Edit: I will also point out that the Blues have consistently outperformed advanced statistic models the past few years, whether it be standings or playoff matchups. I am convinced it is why Dom from The Athletic hates us. I remember when we beat the Wild in the first round a few years back and Dom was flabbergasted as to how because his model had something like 96% chance for the Wild to win.

His dislike for the Blues started when we won the Cup, his model had the Bruins at ~75%, with them winning in 5 as the most likely outcome. Then it's gotten worse as the team has fairly regularly outperformed his model.

 

[HighNote]

It's really not that much. If Broberg isn't an NHL player, Neighbours shoots under 10%, and Binnington is just average we're close. Throw in any real injury to the top 3 forwards and that's really all that needs to happen. You scoring depth is tremendously thin and Parayko is our only top pairing D.

Those things bring us to the bottom 10 but nowhere close to last.

 

[Thallis]

Those things bring us to the bottom 10 but nowhere close to last.

I think one of those things brings us to bottom 10. Hell we could be bottom 10 with none of those things happening. Last is a stretch, but it's within the realm of possible outcomes without anything drastic happening.

 

[HighNote]

I think one of those things brings us to bottom 10. Hell we could be bottom 10 with none of those things happening. Last is a stretch, but it's within the realm of possible outcomes without anything drastic happening.

I think you maybe underestimate what it takes to be last place. Last place teams don't have a handful of high end players like Buchnevich, Thomas, Kyrou, Parayko and Binnington. They have maybe 1 or two of those guys and not nearly as much depth as we do. Think about a player like Walker playing in the middle six for the entire season. Schenn competing to be your leading scorer. Your top pairing is Leddy-Kessel and the net is shared between a 2 guys that are both backup goalies. That is the type of team to be last.