St. Louis Blues History: The Blues Continue Their Downward Spiral Of Centers
By Todd Panula
While the St. Louis Blues had a history of some great centers in their earlier history, it hasn’t been a great position of late. The mid-late 90’s were the beginning of the downward trend.
It’s interesting how crystallized things can become when reading about old things, even though the original writer did not intend it that way. That’s the case in describing the St. Louis Blues acquisition of Darren Turcotte in the summer of 1997.
The Blues were in need of depth at the center position, something we know all to well these days. So, they traded away Stephane Matteau.
The hero of the New York Rangers, who had defeated the Devils on route to their championship, never amounted to much in St. Louis. He was not a bad player, but only managed 56 points in 120 games with the Blues. So, his loss was not that largely felt.
Even at the time, fans knew they weren’t going to get someone that was going to tear it up in Turcotte. Even so, they were hopeful he would at least be a contributing factor.
However, he ended up being the next in line for an ever downward trend in centers. The position had slipped with each trade, which was interestingly pointed out with a simple seven degrees of separation discussion in the newspaper.
Although it did not last nearly long enough, it can’t really be argued that Adam Oates was an upgrade from Bernie Federko. Perhaps not over the course of their careers as a whole, but for what they were offering at that point in their careers, the Blues won that deal.
However, from there on out it was downhill each time. As pointed out in the article, the Blues got Craig Janney for Oates. Janney was a good player, but no Oates. Then, in the round about way, different swaps led to Turcotte being on the Blues.
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Admittedly, trying to connect the dots as though each player was actually linked to the next is a bit of a stretch. However, the article was interesting in pointing out how far the position had fallen with the Blues with each passing year.
By the time Turcotte found his way onto the team, the Blues were especially thin at the spot despite the number of players listed. Pierre Turgeon was the clear number one center on the team. After that, it was dubious at best who to place at the second spot, which is likely why Joel Quenneville was hesitant to say Turcotte was the second center.
Mike Eastwood, Harry York and Terry Yake were all listed as centers too. They all had decent points with both the Blues and in their careers, but none are likely to go down in the annals of Blues history as players we’ll remember for all time.
It is difficult to find great centers. If it was easy to get one, everyone would have one or more. Instead, there are plenty of teams, including the Blues, in constant search of that top-line center.
This deal was just another in a long line of failed attempts to find a new center. Turcotte gave his best, but he had had diminishing returns for awhile.
By the time he landed on the Blues, 12 goals and 18 points was all they could get out of the player. He left the summer after and only managed 49 more games over two seasons with Nashville until he retired in 2000.
Next: Gretzky Leaves The Blues 20 Years Ago
The Blues have made plenty of worse deals. Matteau never scored more than the 36 he had in his final season with the Blues, so it wasn’t like they gave up a ton. However, it was just the next step in a long line of failed attempts to fill their center position.