2024-2025 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread.

[ChicagoBlues]

I think a lot of what you are seeing is what happens when a coaching staff makes changes up and down the lineup and puts players in roles that are above their skill level or plays skilled players out of their normal position. I am curious as to how things would have played out differently if we had simply put a placeholder into the void left by Thomas and left everyone else where they were instead of shuffling the entire lineup around. Or maybe this is something that just doesn't work in hockey like it does in baseball.

This is what we are seeing with Texier. Yesterday, I was trying to find these words to describe my opinion of Texier. You described it in the way I was thinking.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

This is what we are seeing with Texier. Yesterday, I was trying to find these words to describe my opinion of Texier. You described it in the way I was thinking.

What is appropriate role for him? He doesn't appear to do anything particularly well. He has decent size for a skilled player, but he doesn't seem to have much offensive instincts. He has decent skill for a checking role, but he doesn't seem to want to consistently check. I just don't see a role for him on decent team unless he really kicks it up a gear.

Off the top of my head I would have expected Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, NYI, Columbus, Calgary, Philly, and Anaheim at the very least.

Other than Minnesota, those are all fairly crappy teams but are they really less talented up front than Thomas-less Blues? Maybe, but it's not clear to me they are. They certainly can't be any worse at center.

 

[Stealth JD]

What is appropriate role for him? He doesn't appear to do anything particularly well. He has decent size for a skilled player, but he doesn't seem to have much offensive instincts. He has decent skill for a checking role, but he doesn't seem to want to consistently check. I just don't see a role for him on decent team unless he really kicks it up a gear.

Europe. Dude is not an NHL-caliber player. We’re witnessing the end of his career in real time. If he never dressed for the Blues again, that would be a small step in the right direction for this organization.

 

[Celtic Note]

It seems like we loaded the team with bigger, hard skating and physical guys. We have depth for days. I see a short supply of hockey IQ and just general usable talent at the moment. I hope we aren’t losing sight of what wins hockey games.

 

[BlueDream]

It seems like we loaded the team with bigger, hard skating and physical guys. We have depth for days. I see a short supply of hockey IQ and just general usable talent at the moment. I hope we aren’t losing sight of what wins hockey games.

I don’t think we need to go chicken little here. There’s a lot of things that win hockey games. The Blues clearly aren’t losing sight of that because they made steps to improve the team’s skating and defensive ability in the offseason. Injuries have hindered that, but it’s not like we can just snap our fingers and easily add talent to the roster. We will just have to wait for a lot of that talent to arrive, in the form of our prospects. That’s what a re-tool is.

 

[SirPaste]

I don’t think we need to go chicken little here. There’s a lot of things that win hockey games. The Blues clearly aren’t losing sight of that because they made steps to improve the team’s skating and defensive ability in the offseason. Injuries have hindered that, but it’s not like we can just snap our fingers and easily add talent to the roster. We will just have to wait for a lot of that talent to arrive, in the form of our prospects. That’s what a re-tool is.

Exactly, I think we all knew going into the season that our team had great bottom 6 depth but was severely lacking in top 6 talent, and now that you have subtracted Thomas from the mix it is even more glaring. The hope is that we will have an induction of talent in the near future with Dvorsky and Snuggerud then hopefully another lesser prospect can also flourish but that is kind of a longshot at this point. I am sure it is as clear to management as it is to us that they are going to need to infuse this team with more top 6 talent if they are going to take that next step, right now they have 3 legitimate top 6 forwards and one of them has a broken ankle. It would certainly help if one or both of Neighbours or Bolduc could take that next step but so far this season we haven't seen it, it is still early going though so let's give it some time.

 

[LGB]

Europe. Dude is not an NHL-caliber player. We’re witnessing the end of his career in real time. If he never dressed for the Blues again, that would be a small step in the right direction for this organization.

I agree unfortunately. Should not have committed to him for 2 years.

 

[taylord22]

From JR's recent piece on Thomas. It appears he might be the type of player that wins you games. Imagine if he had linemates and a 2C to lean on.

 

[Brian39]

3rd pairs are obviously sheltered but not to that amount. Also not when you have a 40 yo who started the year on the 3rd pair now on the first pair and D younger than Perunovich who started the year as a healthy scratch in the top 4. We need to balance out the usage to alleviate their workloads.

If you have a guy who does nothing well, but nothing poorly, you can do that. Having a guy who cannot defend and is known for offense (yet just scored his first goal at 26), you cannot balance anything, even a little bit. Our D deployment, including the 3rd pair was much more balanced before we were forced to play Perunovich.

We don't have a guy in the organization to do that at the moment. Leddy is hurt. Broberg is hurt. They will not be playing in the short term. Tucker played himself out of the NHL last year and there is zero reason to believe that he is currently capable of balancing anything. He is also extremely obviously not a viable option for the 2nd PP unit. The rest of the AHL D have no NHL experience and there is zero reason to believe that guys currently bleeding shots/chances in the AHL are going to stop doing that if asked to play non-sheltered minutes in the NHL. I don't think it would be remotely good for the development of anyone to ask them to save the D group in the short term.

I don't think anyone is arguing in favor of Perunovich as a long term solution to the D group. We're talking about who should be in the lineup right now when 2 of our LD (and 2 of our 4 best puckhandling D) are out of the lineup.

Basically every team runs into balancing issues when two of three D men on one side are out of the lineup at the same time. Leo Loof isn't going to come in and allow the Blues to stop sheltering the bottom pair. Neither is anyone else from the AHL team. No one from the AHL is sliding into top 4 minutes effectively.

When you are down to 1 of your 3 regular LD (ignoring Krug since we had time to plan around his injury in the offseason), the reality is that you are going to have to use obviously flawed players and put them in position to succeed while asking your remaining healthy regulars to take on larger roles. You certainly don't remove the flawed players from the lineup when they have tangible success in that role in favor of complete unknowns who aren't crushing it in the AHL.

 

[LGB]

From JR's recent piece on Thomas. It appears he might be the type of player that wins you games. Imagine if he had linemates and a 2C to lean on.

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lol holy shit

 

[ChicagoBlues]

What is appropriate role for him? He doesn't appear to do anything particularly well. He has decent size for a skilled player, but he doesn't seem to have much offensive instincts. He has decent skill for a checking role, but he doesn't seem to want to consistently check. I just don't see a role for him on decent team unless he really kicks it up a gear.

I don’t know. He put up a decent amount of points with a really crappy team, which could be viewed with a double edge.

 

[BadgersandBlues]

The knock on Texier was always his defense dragging down his offense, and so far, that's exactly what I'm seeing from him on the Blues. He's got by far the worst xGA/60 on our team at like 4.5 or something. Schenn, who I would trade for a bag of rat droppings, is second worst on our team yet is a full goal less per 60 at like 3.4.

When Texier is out there, the other team has the puck way more often then we do, often thanks to his inability to control it or win battles for it. He's been a massive anchor to every line he's played on so far, and is frankly the only thing keeping Schenn from worst player on the team status.

I'd take Sunny/Walker/Toro/Faksa and their utter lack of offensive capability over Schenn/Texier right now, because at least they are limiting chances against.

 

[Majorityof1]

We don't have a guy in the organization to do that at the moment. Leddy is hurt. Broberg is hurt. They will not be playing in the short term. Tucker played himself out of the NHL last year and there is zero reason to believe that he is currently capable of balancing anything. He is also extremely obviously not a viable option for the 2nd PP unit. The rest of the AHL D have no NHL experience and there is zero reason to believe that guys currently bleeding shots/chances in the AHL are going to stop doing that if asked to play non-sheltered minutes in the NHL. I don't think it would be remotely good for the development of anyone to ask them to save the D group in the short term.

I don't think anyone is arguing in favor of Perunovich as a long term solution to the D group. We're talking about who should be in the lineup right now when 2 of our LD (and 2 of our 4 best puckhandling D) are out of the lineup.

Basically every team runs into balancing issues when two of three D men on one side are out of the lineup at the same time. Leo Loof isn't going to come in and allow the Blues to stop sheltering the bottom pair. Neither is anyone else from the AHL team. No one from the AHL is sliding into top 4 minutes effectively.

When you are down to 1 of your 3 regular LD (ignoring Krug since we had time to plan around his injury in the offseason), the reality is that you are going to have to use obviously flawed players and put them in position to succeed while asking your remaining healthy regulars to take on larger roles. You certainly don't remove the flawed players from the lineup when they have tangible success in that role in favor of complete unknowns who aren't crushing it in the AHL.

You are reading too much into this. The discussion was predicated on IF Loof were to get in a game with everyone healthy. That is probably not the case and I wasn't even arguing he should. But if he did, he would be replacing either Perunovich or POJ, possibly Kessel.

I'd pick playing POJ over Peru in that case. You say no one is sliding into the top 4. POJ is in our top 4 now, so we'd either need to put Loof there or move someone off the sheltered 3rd pair Into the top 4. Again, that's if Loof slots in, which he very possibly might not.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

The knock on Texier was always his defense dragging down his offense, and so far, that's exactly what I'm seeing from him on the Blues. He's got by far the worst xGA/60 on our team at like 4.5 or something. Schenn, who I would trade for a bag of rat droppings, is second worst on our team yet is a full goal less per 60 at like 3.4.

When Texier is out there, the other team has the puck way more often then we do, often thanks to his inability to control it or win battles for it. He's been a massive anchor to every line he's played on so far, and is frankly the only thing keeping Schenn from worst player on the team status.

I'd take Sunny/Walker/Toro/Faksa and their utter lack of offensive capability over Schenn/Texier right now, because at least they are limiting chances against.

I've soured on Texier. He's a low IQ player. Pretty much gets the puck and slings it wherever he feels like it. There's no rhyme or reason to some of the plays he's made with the puck.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

I've soured on Texier. He's a low IQ player. Pretty much gets the puck and slings it wherever he feels like it. There's no rhyme or reason to some of the plays he's made with the puck.

I was gonna ask if Texier is French for Vrana, but Vrana at least had high-end skill.

 

[joe galiba]

I was gonna ask if Texier is French for Vrana, but Vrana at least had high-end skill.

see below:

Texier is the French form of the Dutch or German Textor

Textor is a surname of German and Dutch origin, meaning "weaver"

Vrána is a Czech surname meaning "crow"

 

[STLegend]

I'm guessing Loof being recalled as a bit of insurance with us having a back to back this weekend.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

I've soured on Texier. He's a low IQ player. Pretty much gets the puck and slings it wherever he feels like it. There's no rhyme or reason to some of the plays he's made with the puck.

Yes, he’s kind of a doofus. Almost as bad as Kostin. In Texier’s very first game in the Blue Note, he did exactly the type of stuff that got Kostin shitcanned.

 

[Brockon]

I was gonna ask if Texier is French for Vrana, but Vrana at least had high-end skill.

see below:

Texier is the French form of the Dutch or German Textor

Textor is a surname of German and Dutch origin, meaning "weaver"

Vrána is a Czech surname meaning "crow"

Pretty sure there's a silent "T" making it Text-hier, literally translating to yesterday's mail.
/s

Honestly what I'm seeing is a guy who looks lost currently, and I feel a good part of that has been a lack of chemistry and consistency in playing in the NHL. This added onto injuries and lost playing time.

17-18 D+1 SHL.
18-19 D+2 SHL, 2 NHL + 7 AHL games
19-20 D+3 36 NHL games, suffers stress fracture to lumbar.
20-21 covid season. Loaned to SHL initially before cancelling, playing near home and then returning for the covid season - 49 NHL games
21-22 36 NHL games - broken finger, plus leaves team in March.
22-23 Swiss league - granted leave to let him be close to home dealing with multiple personal losses (couldn't find details - but was at NHLPA's recommendation).
23-24 78 NHL games.
24-25 10 NHL games.

He's played 211 NHL games over the span of 8 seasons (including this year). He's also played in 4 other pro leagues and whatever the French league qualifies as...

Neighbours was drafted 3 years after Texier and has 145 NHL games played (66 less than Texier) in a 4 year span while including this year. This looks worse when you look at the games played excluding this year with Texier's 201 NHL games in 7 years to Neighbours' 129 in 3 years.

There's been no stability for Texier. No consistency in coaching. He understandably looks lost in a very different system under Bannister relative to last year under Granato. Bannister shuffling the deck trying to find something that works with Thomas out hasn't helped Texier find stability on a new team in the slightest.

This all said... He's got to be better if he wants to stay in the NHL. There's a lot of room for improvement and competition for his spot on this team next year (maybe even this year when everyone is healthy). I hope he finds himself and settles down onto the team, showing more of what got him drafted in the 2nd round in 2017, because he's gone if he doesn't show something before the end of this year (likely waived next fall and potentially in Springfield?).