St. Louis Blues: 1984 Re-Draft A Nightmare, Worse Than The Original

The St. Louis Blues had some rough years in the early 1980’s from a draft standpoint. The NHL redoing the 1984 draft was even worse.

Re-drafting is all the rage these days as NHL.com has been doing one for just about every year in recent memory. The St. Louis Blues are rarely the beneficiary of those.

The early 1980’s were not that great to the Blues as far as the draft went. Of course, there were some gem picks, but the drafts as a whole were a little iffy.

You have the infamous 1983 draft where the Blues did not even show up. There was ownership dispute and when the league blocked a sale/move to Saskatoon, Ralston-Purina took their ball and went home, leaving the franchise without any picks.

1984 was another mixed bag. If you look at the Blues picks in a vacuum, it was not completely awful.

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They drafted Brian Benning, Tony Hrkac and Cliff Ronning. All three played over 500 games in the NHL – over 1000 for Ronning – and had solid careers.

Benning played parts of five seasons with St. Louis, but was somewhat wasted on some mediocre teams in the late 1980’s. Hrkac played parts of four seasons. Ronning was a good player, but went on to bigger things with Vancouver.

The problem is who the Blues missed out on. They had no first round pick, so missed out on names like Mario Lemieux, Kirk Muller, Ed Olcyk, Al Iafrate, Petr Svboda, Gary Roberts and Kevin Hatcher.

The Blues took Benning at 26. They could have had either Stephan Richer or Jeff Brown.

The third round was the most egregious. With the 50th overall pick, the Blues selected Toby Ducolon, who played no games.

Want to know who was selected with the 51st pick? Only one of the greatest goaltenders of all time, Patrick Roy.

St. Louis took Steve Tuttle with the 113th pick. Brett Hull was taken with the 117th.

We could go on. Let’s not.

Needless to say, the official 1984 draft was not what it could have been for the Blues in hindsight. However, I’ll take that any day over NHL.com’s re-draft. It’s quite sickening.

You need go no further than the third overall selection. In reality, the Chicago Blackhawks took Ed Olcyk, who had a good career.

In the re-draft, the Blackhawks take Brett Hull. It’s sickening to think about.

That is the kind of thing that makes one appreciate why Blackhawks fans were opposed to the idea of Jonathan Toews in a Blues uniform after a re-draft of 2006. It’s a mistake rectified, but one that makes your rival’s stomach twist in knots.

Maybe Hull would not have developed as well in Chicago. The pressure of living up to his father in the city where the name was established might have proven too much. Doubtful, but there is no way of knowing.

What we do know is that the talent would have been unstoppable. Who knows what player doesn’t end up in Chicago because of Hull, but imagine Hull combined with guys like Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios and Ed Belfour.

Chicago probably wins the 1992 Stanley Cup Final, or at least makes a series out of it, if Hull is on that team. Without Hull, the Blues likely end up moving eventually.

There were no major overtures to buy the team again during Hull’s time here. However, without that marquee player who helped get the team a new arena, the Blues viability in St. Louis would definitely have been in question.

This is all in hindsight. However, you know we would have hated Hull’s guts if he was in a Blackhawks uniform during those early 1990’s years. We hated everyone else and he would have been a level above since he was so good.

Next. Blues best American players. dark

Thankfully, we don’t have to consider that outside of the what-if realm, just the same as Blackhawks fans don’t have to think about the Blues having Captain Canada on their team.

Thank heavens for that though. 1984 was filled with some big swings and misses for the Blues in the draft. Having Hull wear the black and red would have just been insult to injury.

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