St. Louis Blues: Tribulation And Transitions

By Ryan Leatherman | Dec 12, 2015

Growth spurts are awkward: just ask the St. Louis Blues.

Inconsistency and frustration have been par for the course for the Blues, who have been mired in a stretch of mediocre play. While the team’s young stars have been bailing the Blues out, conflicting play styles and forgotten fundamentals have set the Blues further behind the Dallas Stars, who the Blues play at home Saturday night.

As I wrote about last week, tensions are mounting in regards to coach Ken Hitchcock. Playoff failures aside, the Blues have dropped four of five since the start of December, with three of those losses coming on home ice. Throughout each loss, Hitchcock altered the lines on the fly, primarily by moving Alex Steen up and down the lineup to increase scoring depth.

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Unsurprisingly, the one contest that the Blues won this month was the only game in which the lines didn’t change during the course of the game. Chemistry within the lines devastated the Coyotes. Paajarvi rocketed a pass that Tarasenko buried; Backes and Steen sniped Smith on a two-on-one and Lehtera sprung Shattenkirk after impressive zone time.

The very soul of the Blues is being tugged in two directions. For years, the coach and the veteran leadership of this team has tried to out-grit and out-will the opponent on a nightly basis.

The same kind of ‘bring your lunch pail to the rink’ mentality has possessed the Blues since their inception, and the results have been nil, unless you consider depression a result. On the other hand, ‘recklessness’ beckons with a cadre of young, skilled forwards. Now, the Blues are faced with the ultimate, blunt-force decision: to stay the course or to get with the times.

As I heard a man say once: Insanity is taking the same action and expecting a different result.

Hitchcock has earned respect, but looking at the players on the ice, not everyone seems to be buying into his hard-nosed system. And the explanation is simple: it’s rough. Really rough.

Playing physical and grinding out board battles on a nightly basis is a physically demanding play style. And considering how broken-down the Blues always seem in spring, this is no doubt factors into their playoff failures.

In front of our eyes, our team has been transformed from a lumbering gang of physical marauders into a more swarthy, skilled troupe of snipers. Just look at our third line: two years ago, we were talking about Brendan Morrow, Vladimir Sobotka and Derek Roy. Now? Robby Fabbri, Jori Lehtera and Dimitri Jaskin.

Fabbri/Lehtera/Jaskin can play dump and chase hockey, but why should they? This current iteration of the Blues has the offensive talent and skill to compete in a modern system, but Hitchcock’s command forces them to chip the puck in rather than attempt to utilize their skill. In other words, fruit is withering on the vine here in St. Louis.

The Blues have what it takes to win in this league, and in flashes, they’ve shown it. However, as Jeff Gordon wrote for the Post-Dispatch today, St. Louis is suffering from “message fatigue.” We’ve got an extremely young roster now- Backes is currently our oldest player on a nightly basis- and the Blues’ youth movement will only tolerate being misused for so long.

Last night, Alex Pietrangelo seemed extremely frustrated at Hitchcock’s timeout call in the third, and this rare on-ice outburst hints at what I believe to be a deeper rift amongst the team.

This theory certainly passes the eye test- watch how the Backes line faithfully completes the dump-and-chase program, while on a younger, newer line, Jaskin darts in behind defenders. We’re playing two different games, and the 1-4 December record shows that fact as clear as daylight.

This year, it seems like Hitchcock’s plan is to have it both ways: get more reckless and remain conservative. For instance: send Joel Edmunson down and bring up the more dynamic Petteri Lindbohm. Sounds good, right? Well, reports are out that Bortuzzo is skating as a forward, in order to get more agitation in the lineup. Two steps forward, one step back.

As we’ve seen this month, this misshapen hybrid of a team has difficulties. We lost to the Maple Leafs at Scottrade, for God’s sake. For the first month of the season, despite the injuries, the reckless, aggressive play style translated into a trail of scorched earth in western Canada. Now, we can barely scratch out a win against bottom-feeders at home.

Next: Magnus Paajarvi To Remain On Top Line

In six weeks, the Blues will ostensibly get both Patrik Berglund and Jaden Schwartz back. The main question will be how far down the standings the Blues will have fallen by then.

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