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2024-2025 Blues Multi-Purpose Thread.

Army stated that with only 13 forwards the coaching staff will have to play Texier more. Sounds like the coaching staff for some reason doesn't like Texier as much as Armstrong does. This same scenario may be happening with Bolduc as well.
 
We have a lot of room for new people.

I suppose you could say Sylvegard and Stenberg kind of cancel each other out, but we also have Texier who isn’t getting any playing time, Saad now on waivers, and Perunovich gone without anything in return.

I Wonder what’s gonna fill the empty spaces.
 
Its insane how thin this team is up front.
Thomas, Kyrou, Buch, Holloway, Schenn, Bolduc. Neighbours
The separation after the top 7 is mind boggling

Faksa, Sunny, Walker, Torp, Joseph, Texier. These guys don't even leave the press box on a playoff team and we have 2 of them minimum in our top 9 every game. Zero depth at forward right now
 
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I am surprised he said something along the lines of "last season Buch and Thomas were good and Schenn wasn't great, but this year it's the opposite"
 
I went to sleep last night firmly convinced that our playoff possibility was 100% closed and that it was time to dramatically shift away from trying to win games and towards elevating certain guys with an eye for the future. Armstrong woke up this morning and clearly agreed. Before we do that, I'd like to take a quick check under the hood as people are starting to sour a bit on these boards re: Montgomery.

We have taken enormous steps at 5v5 under Monty. We went from a bottom 5 team in xGF% to a top half team. If you take out the "new coach bump" games when the Blues went 4-0-1 record, we rank 13th in xGF%. Looking at HDCF% - we have been a top 10 team after the coaching change overall as well as if we take the 5 game "bump" out of the equation. From an actual GF%, we are in the top 5 both overall and after the 5 game bump of all teams. As we saw with Monty as our assistant coach, we've had strong underlying numbers at 5v5 and then we've actually outperformed those numbers dramatically. It's unreal how much better our 5v5 play has been under Montgomey. Again for emphasis, we have been a top 5 team in GF% since Monty arrived. That's an incredible turnaround compared to the last two years.

That leaves us with two other factors - Special Teams and Goaltending. I'll start with special teams. Our PP has actually been surprisingly solid. Overall we're at 19th since the coaching change, but if you take out the first 5 games (The "bump") our PP has ranked 13th at 22.2%.

Our PK, on the other hand, has been abysmal. It's actually been historically bad. Since Monty took over, we've ranked second worst in the league at 68.2%!!!!!!!!!!! Holy shit! If we take out the "bump" games, we have had THE WORST PK in the entire league, coming in at 61.5!!! Boston, ranked two spots higher, has killed 10% more PKs then we have! Double HOLY SHIT! For reference, the worst PK for an entire season was the 1979-1980 LA Kings at 68.2%. So in short, we have had the worst PK in league HISTORY under Montgomery. Big Yikes. As we all know, your goaltender is your biggest PKer, so this segways nicely.

Goaltending has been atrocious this season. According to Moneypuck, out of goalies with at least 23 games played, Binnington ranks 23rd out of 33 from a GSAx perspective. According to Evolving Hockey, he ranks 51st out of all goalies (89 total) with at least 50 unblocked shot attempts against. Again, Evolving Hockey had him rated higher last year then Moneypuck, when he had his best season in years. Hofer is doing even worse from a GSAx perspective. I read or heard that after last night, we've given up a goal on the first shot seven times this season. That's 14% of our games - we're down 1-0 by the first shot. After being a huge strength last season, goaltending has been anything but.

Moving forward, I'd like to see a number of things:

1. Bolduc is stapled to Thomas' wing for at least the next 10 games. I'd honestly put Neighbors up there as well and run a 10 game mini-tryout of Neighbors-Thomas-Bolduc.
2. Give Holloway a 10 game trial as the 2C, between Kyrou and either Buch or Neighbors if you want Buch on the wing with Thomas. Let's see if the kid can handle 2C if we give him some of our better wingers. I wouldn't even be opposed to keeping Schenn with them, but I want Schenn on the wing and Holloway at Center.
3. Broberg gets all the matchups. I mean all of them. I want him out there against the other team's top line. I want him out there on PP1 AND PK1. I want him out there in the last 2-3 minutes of games where we are ahead, as well as games where we are behind. I want him to hear nothing but, we think you could be THE GUY moving forward, now go out there and kick f***ing ass and show us what you got. You've got 30 games of being our #1 all situations guy, let's see how you meet the moment.
4. I would honestly consider giving Colten Ellis a cup of coffee. He's had a solid year in the AHL and I think it might be good to remind both Binner and Hofer that nothing is set in stone, you've still got to prove yourself. I can't see how he'd be a downgrade over either of them for a 2-3 game look.
5. I was going to have something here about trading Saad, but putting him on Waivers does the trick. I would also assess the markets for Buch and Binnington, maybe Fowler as well. I would 100% look to move anyone in our bottom 6 forward group (Sunny/Joseph/Walker/Toro/Faksa/Texier).
 
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BadgersandBlues said:
Moving forward, I'd like to see a number of things:

1. Bolduc is stapled to Thomas' wing for at least the next 10 games. I'd honestly put Neighbors up there as well and run a 10 game mini-tryout of Neighbors-Thomas-Bolduc. YES
2. Give Holloway a 10 game trial as the 2C, between Kyrou and either Buch or Neighbors if you want Buch on the wing with Thomas. Let's see if the kid can handle 2C if we give him some of our better wingers. I wouldn't even be opposed to keeping Schenn with them, but I want Schenn on the wing and Holloway at Center. I'd rather not break up our only line that's creating offense right now.
3. Broberg gets all the matchups. I mean all of them. I want him out there against the other team's top line. I want him out there on PP1 AND PK1. I want him out there in the last 2-3 minutes of games where we are ahead, as well as games where we are behind. I want him to hear nothing but, we think you could be THE GUY moving forward, now go out there and kick f***ing ass and show us what you got. You've got 30 games of being our #1 all situations guy, let's see how you meet the moment. As long as Parayko is given the most minutes and still serves as our top PK guy, sure, why not?
4. I would honestly consider giving Colten Ellis a cup of coffee. He's had a solid year in the AHL and I think it might be good to remind both Binner and Hofer that nothing is set in stone, you've still got to prove yourself. I can't see how he'd be a downgrade over either of them for a 2-3 game look. This creates roster issues. Do you want to carry 3 goaltenders?
5. I was going to have something here about trading Saad, but putting him on Waivers does the trick. I would also assess the markets for Buch and Binnington, maybe Fowler as well. I would 100% look to move anyone in our bottom 6 forward group (Sunny/Joseph/Walker/Toro/Faksa/Texier). Justin Faulk needs to be moved before almost everyone on that list.
Click to expand...
 
I made the mistake of listening to 101 waiting for presser snippets

At the risk of sounding like an apologist, this is year-1 of the 'build' per Armstrong, right? What exactly have we done to 'build' around Thomas? Or Kyrou, for that matter? Ever?

Subtracted vets. Fired a coach who himself said 'it was probably time'. Fired a coach that was always a band-aid. And...Brought in a hodge podge of roll players...?

What else have we done to 'build' around these two? You could argue that Thomas and Buch -until this year- have had dynamite chemistry...so you could say you signed Buch to a handful of prime years. And you struck gold with Holly. But what exactly is Armstrong meaningfully observing/evaluating pertaining to the 'core'?

I came into the season feeling like we were essentially in a holding pattern waiting for reinforcements - reinforcements that do in fact look to compliment Thomas and Kyrou. Even if we had made the playoffs this year, the roster was always going to look radically different at the start of next season.

Am I alarmed the same thing keeps happening again every year, at this time? Yes. But, FFS, it's called the dog days of the NHL for a reason. This is not a unique problem. Good teams work through it, sure. But a hodge podge team without a 3rd line was always a bad bet.
 
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BadgersandBlues said:
I went to sleep last night firmly convinced that our playoff possibility was 100% closed and that it was time to dramatically shift away from trying to win games and towards elevating certain guys with an eye for the future. Armstrong woke up this morning and clearly agreed. Before we do that, I'd like to take a quick check under the hood as people are starting to sour a bit on these boards re: Montgomery.

We have taken enormous steps at 5v5 under Monty. We went from a bottom 5 team in xGF% to a top half team. If you take out the "new coach bump" games when the Blues went 4-0-1 record, we rank 13th in xGF%. Looking at HDCF% - we have been a top 10 team after the coaching change overall as well as if we take the 5 game "bump" out of the equation. From an actual GF%, we are in the top 5 both overall and after the 5 game bump of all teams. As we saw with Monty as our assistant coach, we've had strong underlying numbers at 5v5 and then we've actually outperformed those numbers dramatically. It's unreal how much better our 5v5 play has been under Montgomey. Again for emphasis, we have been a top 5 team in GF% since Monty arrived. That's an incredible turnaround compared to the last two years.

That leaves us with two other factors - Special Teams and Goaltending. I'll start with special teams. Our PP has actually been surprisingly solid. Overall we're at 19th since the coaching change, but if you take out the first 5 games (The "bump") our PP has ranked 13th at 22.2%.

Our PK, on the other hand, has been abysmal. It's actually been historically bad. Since Monty took over, we've ranked second worst in the league at 68.2%!!!!!!!!!!! Holy shit! If we take out the "bump" games, we have had THE WORST PK in the entire league, coming in at 61.5!!! Boston, ranked two spots higher, has killed 10% more PKs then we have! Double HOLY SHIT! For reference, the worst PK for an entire season was the 1979-1980 LA Kings at 68.2%. So in short, we have had the worst PK in league HISTORY under Montgomery. Big Yikes. As we all know, your goaltender is your biggest PKer, so this segways nicely.

Goaltending has been atrocious this season. According to Moneypuck, out of goalies with at least 23 games played, Binnington ranks 23rd out of 33 from a GSAx perspective. According to Evolving Hockey, he ranks 51st out of all goalies (89 total) with at least 50 unblocked shot attempts against. Again, Evolving Hockey had him rated higher last year then Moneypuck, when he had his best season in years. Hofer is doing even worse from a GSAx perspective. I read or heard that after last night, we've given up a goal on the first shot seven times this season. That's 14% of our games - we're down 1-0 by the first shot. After being a huge strength last season, goaltending has been anything but.

Moving forward, I'd like to see a number of things:

1. Bolduc is stapled to Thomas' wing for at least the next 10 games. I'd honestly put Neighbors up there as well and run a 10 game mini-tryout of Neighbors-Thomas-Bolduc.
2. Give Holloway a 10 game trial as the 2C, between Kyrou and either Buch or Neighbors if you want Buch on the wing with Thomas. Let's see if the kid can handle 2C if we give him some of our better wingers. I wouldn't even be opposed to keeping Schenn with them, but I want Schenn on the wing and Holloway at Center.
3. Broberg gets all the matchups. I mean all of them. I want him out there against the other team's top line. I want him out there on PP1 AND PK1. I want him out there in the last 2-3 minutes of games where we are ahead, as well as games where we are behind. I want him to hear nothing but, we think you could be THE GUY moving forward, now go out there and kick f***ing ass and show us what you got. You've got 30 games of being our #1 all situations guy, let's see how you meet the moment.
4. I would honestly consider giving Colten Ellis a cup of coffee. He's had a solid year in the AHL and I think it might be good to remind both Binner and Hofer that nothing is set in stone, you've still got to prove yourself. I can't see how he'd be a downgrade over either of them for a 2-3 game look.
5. I was going to have something here about trading Saad, but putting him on Waivers does the trick. I would also assess the markets for Buch and Binnington, maybe Fowler as well. I would 100% look to move anyone in our bottom 6 forward group (Sunny/Joseph/Walker/Toro/Faksa/Texier).
Click to expand...
Those Montgomery vs start of the season comparisons at 5v5 ignore adding Fowler and Thomas/Broberg missing significant games early. Thomas hasn't been Thomas but hes better than not having 4 Cs at all.
 
Majorityof1 said:
Those Montgomery vs start of the season comparisons at 5v5 ignore adding Fowler and Thomas/Broberg missing significant games early. Thomas hasn't been Thomas but hes better than not having 4 Cs at all.
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I've heard you bang this drum before and you're putting your head in the sand to try and make a point.

Bannister had 50+ games last season. He had another 23 or whatever this season. His numbers over the course of almost an entire full season of games across two seasons was a bottom 5 5v5 team. Even accounting for the small sample size where he had both Broberg and Thomas, we were still a bottom 5 5v5 team during those games. Berube had a bottom 5 5v5 team over 100ish games over two seasons.

Monty has taken our underlying numbers to the moon in 30 games. Yes, we did bring in Fowler, who has helped. But you're crazy if you don't think the Blues have improved dramatically 5v5 since we brought Montgomery in.
 
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BadgersandBlues said:
I've heard you bang this drum before and you're putting your head in the sand to try and make a point.

Bannister had 50+ games last season. He had another 23 or whatever this season. His numbers over the course of almost an entire full season of games across two seasons was a bottom 5 5v5 team. Even accounting for the small sample size where he had both Broberg and Thomas, we were still a bottom 5 5v5 team during those games. Berube had a bottom 5 5v5 team over 100ish games over two seasons.

Monty has taken our underlying numbers to the moon in 30 games. Yes, we did bring in Fowler, who has helped. But you're crazy if you don't think the Blues have improved dramatically 5v5 since we brought Montgomery in.
Click to expand...
We have a dramatically better roster now than last year as well. Fowler, Suter, Faksa, Broberg, Holloway. That is drastically better. So yes, that matters when judging coaches.

But sure Bannister had Broberg and Thomas and Faksa etc for all of 7 games (not even whole) games, so that's enough to make a comparison. Nevermind that we had Leddy playing big minutes hurt and buchnevich at C those 7 games ( which may have been Bannisters idea but Army talked about it b4 he was named full time coach).

Also Bannister had a better record last year than Monty this year despite the worse team. So yea for inflated 5v5 #s and still missing the playoffs.
 
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Majorityof1 said:
We have a dramatically better roster now than last year as well. Fowler, Suter, Faksa, Broberg, Holloway. That is drastically better. So yes, that matters when judging coaches.

But sure Bannister had Broberg and Thomas and Faksa etc for all of 7 games (not even whole) games, so that's enough to make a comparison. Nevermind that we had Leddy playing big minutes hurt and buchnevich at C those 7 games ( which may have been Bannisters idea but Army talked about it b4 he was named full time coach).

Also Bannister had a better record last year than Monty this year despite the worse team. So yea for inflated 5v5 #s and still missing the playoffs.
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Bannister was smart and told the goalies to play at the top of their games every night. Monty is apparently too stupid to do that. Troubling.
 
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BadgersandBlues said:
I've heard you bang this drum before and you're putting your head in the sand to try and make a point.

Bannister had 50+ games last season. He had another 23 or whatever this season. His numbers over the course of almost an entire full season of games across two seasons was a bottom 5 5v5 team. Even accounting for the small sample size where he had both Broberg and Thomas, we were still a bottom 5 5v5 team during those games. Berube had a bottom 5 5v5 team over 100ish games over two seasons.

Monty has taken our underlying numbers to the moon in 30 games. Yes, we did bring in Fowler, who has helped. But you're crazy if you don't think the Blues have improved dramatically 5v5 since we brought Montgomery in.
Click to expand...
Exactly, this team is night and day different. Bannister created a system that didn’t cater to anyone’s strengths and had players looking confused more than anything. Monty has made this team fun to watch. Sure, there are dry spells, but that’s what they are, spells. Bannister had time and had the ability to adjust his strategy over an entire offseason. He just a didn’t do it.

Frankly, I’m firmly in the same camp you are. This team is not good, but it’s finally getting better. It’s been years since I can say this team looks like it’s getting better and I’d argue this team is developing the pieces it needs for the future.

I haven’t felt this level of optimism for the Blues future since the start of 2020.
 
taylord22 said:
I made the mistake of listening to 101 waiting for presser snippets

At the risk of sounding like an apologist, this is year-1 of the 'build' per Armstrong, right? What exactly have we done to 'build' around Thomas? Or Kyrou, for that matter? Ever?

Subtracted vets. Fired a coach who himself said 'it was probably time'. Fired a coach that was always a band-aid. And...Brought in a hodge podge of roll players...?

What else have we done to 'build' around these two? You could argue that Thomas and Buch -until this year- have had dynamite chemistry...so you could say you signed Buch to a handful of prime years. And you struck gold with Holly. But what exactly is Armstrong meaningfully observing/evaluating pertaining to the 'core'?

I came into the season feeling like we were essentially in a holding pattern waiting for reinforcements - reinforcements that do in fact look to compliment Thomas and Kyrou. Even if we had made the playoffs this year, the roster was always going to look radically different at the start of next season.

Am I alarmed the same thing keeps happening again every year, at this time? Yes. But, FFS, it's called the dog days of the NHL for a reason. This is not a unique problem. Good teams work through it, sure. But a hodge podge team without a 3rd line was always a bad bet.
Click to expand...
If you're looking for good hockey talk on 101 ESPN, you're in for a major disappointment.

Someone told me they were entertaining the idea of trading Robert Thomas for JT Miller earlier.
 
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Mike Liut said:
We just jumped Utah for #8. We are climbing the ladder
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Yeah. I can't quite emotionally get myself to root for losses, but I'm kind of hoping they hit the lottery at this point. We just have to be in the top 11 (I think) and get really lucky. If its going to take a longshot, why not win the lottery with the lowest odds (that still lets us get into the top pick)? I want it all!
 
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