St. Louis Blues: What Exactly Is Ken Hitchcock Supposed To Do?

The St. Louis Blues are in a hole in their series with the San Jose Sharks. Their coach has not found the magic words to get his players to play up to potential, but what exactly do fans want him to do?

Now, before we go off on this magic carpet ride, let me state that I don’t hold Hitchcock completely blameless. He is too rigid with some of his ideas, like forcing his team to dump and chase instead of looking for them to have skill.

He tries to match opponents’ lines too much during home games, which puts the Blues out of rhythm. Until this year, he’s been hesitant to let young players play and relied too heavily on veterans.

All that said though, there is a lot of undeserved hate toward the man. What is more, there is absolutely no consistency in terms of what fans want from him.

During Game 3 of the San Jose series, I had a discussion with a woman about this very topic. It was kept cordial and we just had differences of opinion, which is fine.

The thing that bothered me is even within her own argument there were flaws. She, as well as many in Blues Nation, accuse Hitchcock of tinkering with lines too much.

I’m not going to defend him, because he does, but if you think every other coach in the league doesn’t make changes then you’re kidding yourself. Perhaps there were times in the regular season where he did not let the players work the kinks out first, but in the playoffs you don’t have time to hope they will.

Then there’s the argument that the tinkering messes with team chemistry. Sorry, but the Blues had the same lines in Games 1 and 2 of the San Jose series. The Blues were fortunate to sneak a win in the first and got taken down in the second. There’s reason to think there would be changes and there should have been. The status-quo was not working.

Next it was suggested that San Jose’s coach isn’t juggling his lines. Patrick Marleau is not playing with the line he began the playoffs with and the Sharks have shifted a few players. Sometimes it’s due to double shifting, others just a change. We don’t notice that as much because it’s not our team.

This insistence that Hitchcock is blowing up lines is silly. Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz are almost always together, David Backes and Patrik Berglund are almost always together and until late in Game 3, Robby Fabbri, Paul Stastny and Troy Brouwer were always kept together.

The changes for Game 3 vs. San Jose were forced. Scottie Upshall had an upper body injury, which put Magnus Paarvi in the lineup and Dmitrij Jaskin was put in for Steve Ott because Ott was too detrimental with the penalties he was taking.

Then there’s the ever popular discussion about how much a coach can motivate. Listen, none of us have played at a professional level, so we can’t say what is or is not being said in those locker rooms. We can’t say what is motivating or not motivating the players.

Mar 22, 2016; San Jose, CA, USA; St. Louis Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock talks to his team in the game against the San Jose Sharks in the 3rd period at SAP Center at San Jose. Mandatory Credit: John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports The Blues won 1-0. /

Personally, I’ve never had a coach say anything to make me play worse. Admittedly, I’ve not had one say anything that made me play better either, so maybe that’s on my coaches but in the end, I was either ready to play or not. I either performed well or didn’t. It had little to do with the man on the bench.

I know this though, you can’t say it’s all the players that have won all those regular season games and then say it’s all Hitchcock’s fault when the playoffs roll around.

I don’t care if he gives the speech of a lifetime before every game and has notebooks full of gameplans for each player. The players have to perform on the ice. These are professional hockey players and if they’re so mentally soft that they can’t perform with a different teammate, who they still hang with and talk with and practice with, then they don’t deserve to win.

Champions overcome and the Blues players are not doing that at the moment. Maybe their coach isn’t being all rah rah in the locker room, but if that’s what they need to win then they should be providing it for themselves.

Even outside of that one argument, there’s little fans can agree on when it comes to the coach bashing. Some say he’s hurting poor Brian Elliott‘s confidence by pulling him. Others say he should have pulled him earlier.

Most say he tinkers with lines too much. Others still say he hasn’t tinkered enough. Stastny should be with Tarasenko or Fabbri should be on the top line or bring in Ty Rattie.

Nobody is without blame here. Hitchcock isn’t making the adjustments in-game and the Blues are trying the same thing over and over, without success. That doesn’t make him the scapegoat for team failures.