St. Louis Blues Finalizing Their 2017-18 Coaching Staff

As with everything in sports these days, none of this is officially “official”. However, the Blues have their coaching staff in place and can now begin to look forward.

The St. Louis Blues have not announced anything through the team sites yet, but they now have their staff in place. According to Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they have chosen their final coaches and might even have added a spot.

The worst kept secret, if you even want to call it that, has been the team adding Craig Berube to the staff. He was always going to be the team’s first choice to fill the vacancy.

They were simply waiting to see if Berube could land a head coaching job somewhere. It was the right thing to do, but delayed the process for St. Louis quite a bit.

Now, Berube only has to sign the paperwork and he is on the Blues staff for 2017-18. His addition gives a little more age experience to a staff that was shaping up to be one of the younger ones in the league.

Steve Ott (34), Darryl Sydor (45) and Mike Yeo had an average age of 41. Still, Berube only brings that up to 43, which might be the way to go as the league is trending younger.

With the Blues farm system being a mess for 2017-18, it made all the sense in the world to bring Berube up to the NHL. He precipitated the turnaround of several Blues disappointments and made an impact, in a short time, on some of their new prospects as well.

“Oh, love him,” Tage Thompson said recently. “One of the best (coaches) I’ve ever had by far. I was only there for a short period of time, but just the way he carries himself, what he demands from the players. You can see everyone respects him. When I came in, all the older guys couldn’t speak highly enough about him, and I got to witness it first-hand. The way practices are handled, the relationship he has with the players as well, I just think it’s a mutual respect. He respects the players, and you can see that they work hard for him. It was a lot of fun playing for him.”

Joining Berube on the staff, besides Sydor, will likely be Daniel Tkaczuk. It seemed he would be the odd man out after Ott’s hiring, but the team might be adding an assistant spot to keep the former Wolves band together.

St. Louis has also selected their new man to lead the goaltenders. David Alexander will be the guy leading the charge with Jake Allen.

Alexander has already spent time coaching Allen, as both are natives of New Brunswick and Allen was a personal client. He spent the last few seasons coaching the Syracuse Crunch, where he earned the high praise of St. Louisan Mike McKenna.

“They’re getting a meticulous, forward-thinking, progressive goaltending coach who understands the full spectrum of the position,” McKenna said. “Not just the technical side of it, but the mental side, the teaching side, he’s the whole package. I thought he was overqualified for the American Hockey League. I got to benefit from being with him for the last couple of months this year and he was fantastic.”

Next: Darryl Sydor The Right Man To Lead The Blues Defensemen

Alexander comes from an educational background, getting a degree in education and working at the University of Maine briefly. “…he’s also incredibly personable and he does not put himself, despite his wealth of knowledge, does not put himself above you as the goaltender and the athlete,” continued McKenna.

Doug Armstrong and Mike Yeo have, no doubt, already been working on a draft plan of their own. Now that they have their staff fully formed, they can set all their sights on the upcoming NHL Expansion Draft and Entry Draft, which are June 21 and 23 respectively.

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