St. Louis Blues Continue To Suck The Joy From Hockey

The St. Louis Blues 2018-19 season is slipping through their fingers faster than sand. With that season slipping away, also gone is any joy to be taken from watching them.

Whether you are a long-suffering St. Louis Blues fan that has been there from the very beginning or one that just came along, the one thing we share is a love of this team and a certain happiness in watching them. The 2018-19 version of the Blues have basically taken that joy, wiped their backside with it and flushed it down the toilet.

For whatever reason, that nobody can fully pinpoint, there is something fundamentally wrong with this team. You can say it is leadership or lack of chemistry or any number of reasons, but there is no solid reason this team should be playing as bad as they are. Yet, here we are with the Blues solidly under .500 about 25% of the way through the season.

What makes things worse is how they lose. Most Blues fans, excluding the really young ones, can remember a time when the team was really bad.

Back in the mid-2000’s, we saw one of the worse Blues teams in recent history. You would have to go back to the late 1970’s or early 80’s to find worse teams in franchise history.

However, even those teams in this century had excuses. They were bringing through a ton of youth, trying to build up a core from within and also going through an ownership change where the previous group gutted the team of all its talent to make the team more attractive to buy with a lower payroll.

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This team does not have that excuse. Sure, there are some younger players such as Robert Thomas or even Robby Fabbri, in terms of age. Most of this current team is in the prime of their careers or, at least, entering that phase.

Additionally, they had a team that barely missed the playoffs in 2017-18. That was not a bad team. It simply had some bad stretches and seemed like it just needed some tweaking.

So, Doug Armstrong went out and addressed just about every need he could. He added help at center, which was a position the Blues were desperately thin at. He brought in help for the power play, which was one of the league’s worst. He brought in guys that were a little grittier, such as Tyler Bozak and Pat Maroon – guys that were going to mix it up a little and also get the team netfront presence.

It should have all been a recipe for success and made this team a playoff team for sure and possibly a contender for the division. Yet, it has all gone wrong and the reasons are beyond any of us.

We can all point out the deficiencies of this current team, since they stick out like a sore adult thumb among baby hands. None of the issues were things that we thought would be problems going in.

Fans continue to blame goaltending, but they just hate Jake Allen. The reality is that no goaltender would change anything for this current team. There are rumors that the Blues might be interested in acquiring Jimmy Howard. That makes the blood boil.

Picking up Howard does absolutely nothing for this team. He adds salary, even if you make Allen part of the deal, which is something the Blues cannot afford. He gains you ZERO wins because his deficiencies are basically the same as Allen’s. It is a lateral move by most expectations and, in my opinion, a step back.

He is older and Detroit has been trying to get rid of him for years. Is that something you really want to add to your team right now? Howard is not a savior. He’s going to let in the same goals everyone else has for the Blues because nobody clears the net of rebounds or opponents.

Raise your hand if you thought defense was going to be a problem going into 2018-19. If you see more than one or two hands out there, I would be surprised.

It is not as though there were no defensive problems the last season or two, whether it was under Mike Yeo or Ken Hitchcock before him. But, the team played hard and made things difficult for the their opponent no matter what, even when there was less physicality.

Now, it looks like a bunch of kids out there. They don’t move their feet, they don’t put a body on anyone and they don’t keep track of the backdoor.

Two of the four goals against Detroit on November 28, came because there was someone standing up straight in front of the net and there was nobody watching the Red Wings player on the back side. Anyone short of a superhero or the good lord himself is not going to stop those kinds of goals. You could also make it three of four goals if you count the one where St. Louis had three guys all around the puck and nobody could have the good sense to clear it out, or were too weak to do so.

That is indicative of how the entire season has gone to this point. It has gotten to the level where you expect to lose now and I believe the players think that too, even though they would never and should never admit it.

Nothing goes right for this team. They avoid penalties when they should take them. They take penalties when there is no need.

The power play goes silent when they need it most and then comes to life when it does not matter. The offense pours in a ton of goals within one game, but then gets shutout in three of four.

St. Louis’ defense is basically nonexistent. The Blues have scored four or more goals 12 times in 2018-19. As of writing this article, they have eight wins. So, since all their wins had that many goals, that means there have been four games when scoring four or more goals has not been enough. That is ridiculous.

The Blues have not yet won a game in a one-goal game either. Again, as of writing this, they have seven games where it was decided by one goal and lost them all.

That is just not fun to watch. It is one thing to lose and quite another to just be bad.

As a fan, we always take the losses too hard, but this just feels far too different. Perhaps I only speak for myself, but I feel there is a large and growing group that no longer gets any enjoyment out of watching hockey right now and that is extremely disheartening.

Maybe we only have ourselves to blame. We watch out of habit at this point, even knowing they are not likely to win since they have several losses to league bottom-feeders. Somehow, we keep thinking it might turnaround.

The talent level says it should, but when you are a quarter of the way through the year and it has been the same time after time, we have to assume this is how it will be. That really punches you in the gut.

There is still 75% of the season left and you feel it is all over. I will still watch, as I know you all will, but it just is not fun.

The wins seem more like relief than happiness. The losses feel like the team cannot get any worse and then they say “hold my beer” and show us otherwise.

We are way past the point of moral victories and talking about how effort levels were better on this shift or that game. I’ll still watch, but I get no joy out of it. It’s more a habit than something we want to do right now.