The St. Louis Blues have had plenty of success over the past few seasons. One thing still has not set in though and that’s figuring out what Blues hockey is these days.
The St. Louis Blues have plenty of people telling them how to play these days. They have a new coach, a general manager that seems to change what he wants from the team yearly, fans who want 50 different things and rivals that cover the gambit of styles. All that is on top of the media members who have their own views too.
Originally, this story idea sprang from a headline from the Post-Dispatch. After reading the article, it turned out to be about something else. However, seeing a title saying the Blues need to be more like Nashville was enough.
The Blues have reached the point where they need to just be themselves. They’ve spent too much time now trying to be other teams.
For a few years, the Blues were trying to bulk up to contend with the Los Angeles Kings. Then they were trying to be more skilled to pass up the Chicago Blackhawks.
Following last season, the Blues were supposed to become more of a speed team to catch up to Pittsburgh. At this point, it is enough already.
Whether the Predators win or lose, the Blues need to stop trying to copy anyone. Nashville didn’t really have a solid blueprint to begin with.
They have had several transition years themselves and are only now having success. There is no guarantee of sustained success either.
If every team could pull off what the successful ones have done, they would all be doing it. Regardless of how any fan feels about their owner or general manager, none of them (with the exception of Stan Kroenke) are saying they don’t care if their team doesn’t win a championship.
That is the goal of every team in the league. Each one has to go about it in their own way and play their own style.
Every team has to try and do what is best in the moment and hope it works out best. The 2006 Entry Draft was proof of that. The Blues could have drafted Jonathan Toews and instead went with Erik Johnson because they believed he could be their version of Ray Bourque or Paul Coffey. Clearly it did not work out, but that is only with hindsight behind us. As a side note, Pittsburgh passed up on Toews too.
It is only certain teams that get this treatment too. If the Ottawa Senators somehow manage to win, I doubt there will be tons of teams saying they need to copy their blueprint.
They will have won it with more determination than any specific thing to copy. The same is true of Nashville.
The only thing you could attempt to copy is their salaries. They have several key guys contributing that are currently on very team-friendly deals.
Everyone tries that though. You can only get so many before you’re either known as a cheap or run out of players that are going to play above their pay grade.
Eventually, those players want raises. The Blues are currently in that spot where much of any space they have will likely go toward giving Colton Parayko a raise.
The Blues simply need to figure out what Blues hockey is. We’ve spent a lot of time saying if the Blues played their game, they would win.
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While that was always true and it felt like the team failed as much as their opponent succeeded, defining Blues hockey has not always been easy. In a very short span, they’ve gone from a bruising team to a team trying to be more skilled. They’ve gone from big bodies to smaller guys.
Effort has not always been a consistent in either of those cases. Skill has not increased or decreased by great amounts with any transition other than those mid-2000’s teams to the early 10’s.
Again, the team was still always trying to emulate someone else. They have to figure out the best way to win with the team they will have. Orchestrate a roster that plays the best together, not necessarily the players that are the best.
In that way, I suppose you could almost say they were trying to copy the Miracle on Ice team. That team was built with the players that would best be able to handle Herb Brooks’ style. The USA had more talented players and he left some out in the cold because he wanted guys that would fit the way he wanted to play.
They were not the guys that were going to copy the Russian style or the Finnish style. They had their own way of playing and it was good enough to win.
That’s what the Blues must do. They don’t have the speed yet to compare with other teams. They’ve tried to get faster and still get blown by. They don’t have the skill to hang with teams like Washington or Edmonton, who score goals for fun.
The Blues are a hard working, team with solid players who are not living up to their potential. Whether Mike Yeo can get some of those guys to live up to their potential is yet to be seen.
That will be as much a key as any trades or free agent additions. If the Blues could have gotten more out of guys like Patrik Berglund or David Perron or even Jori Lehtera over the past few postseasons, they might have had a chance to win.
Instead, we are still talking about what the next step is. We are still discussing what the next evolution is.
There are always trends. Any sport has teams trying to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak.
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The Blues need to be the best Blues team they can be. They don’t have a team loaded with superstars, but they are good enough, if they can find a way.
It’s time to stop being someone else. We are not Pittsburgh, we are not Nashville, we are not Chicago. We are St. Louis.
Figure out what the best way is for St. Louis to win and go forward with that.