Lowlights from during my fandom:
Watching the Blues almost move to some postage-stamp city in Canada (100K? We call those towns here...) with the dawning realization there was nothing we as fans could do. All thanks to a group of executives from Purina whose pictures should be under the heading "duplicitous" in a dictionary. In particular one (the most self-aggrandizing son of a ***** I've ever had the misfortune to deal with) whose grave I hope still bears the upside down Blues flag a previous fan so helpfully put there.
Then watching that same group refuse to send anyone to the 1983 draft all because the NHL quite intelligently blocked the sale to freaking Saskatoon. Otherwise that franchise would have folded or been relocated to KC or something by now.
Also Saskatoon is a stupid name.
Trading off Joe Mullen and Perry Turnbull because they wanted more than minimum wage.
Trading off Doug Gilmour because of the attempted fraud that the people responsible for were never punished enough for.
Letting Jacques Demers walk because he actually thought he was a decent coach and deserved salary equivalent to his ability. The Blues thought anyone could do what he did...whereupon he moves to Detroit and wins the Jack Adams.
Yeah.
Trading off Dirk, Momesso, Courtnall and Ronning for Butcher and Quinn, all because the Professor listened entirely too much to that meathead Sutter. Thanks to Sutter's inability to understand that as much as hard work is a skill, the ability to put the puck in the net (or keep it out) is a more important skill basically insured the Blues were going to be a one line team. This cost them against Minnesota.
Also, this would only be the first time Vancouver would take advantage of the Blues. Three years later the Blues would have to trade away Brown and Hedican (why, an entire line of defense!) for Janney after he refused to report to the Canucks. I'm glad his wife left him.
Losing Scott Stevens because the NHL wanted to make an example of the Blues. Lou Lameirello should have asked for Hull, Oates and Stevens, Judge Houston would have no doubt awarded them to the Devils as well.
Then, years later, the Blues would receive another knife-wound thanks to the NHL wanting to make an example and Pat Quinn being more concerned with screwing the Blues over on the way out than he had been with running the team for the past however many years.
The Butcher trade was made because Sutter was not getting along with one of the players traded and wanted him gone, and he also coveted a player on defense like Butcher, so he went around Mr Caron to Jack Quinn take make something happen
the same thing happened in the Stevens/Shanahan fiasco
Sutter and Quinn wanted to sign Shanahan
Mr Caron told them not to, as the Devils would ask for Stevens and would get him, the league would make sure of it
he went on his annual fishing trip to Canada in the summer, there were no outside communications, and when he got back he found out we had signed Shanahan and he was pissed
years later he would still get fired up about the whole thing, he believed if we hadn't done this Stevens would have lead us to a Cup