Before Craig Berube took over the St. Louis Blues in late November, the team had no identity, no motivation and ultimately no hope. Fast forward to February 20th, 2019 and the Blues sit at 69 points and third in the Central Division with all the confidence in the world.
Going into the 2018-2019 NHL season the St. Louis Blues had high expectations from not just the fans here locally, but the team was uncharacteristically getting national attention from the media.
Mike Yeo had a lot of pressure on him going into this season. With Key off-season acquisitions and key players returning for the Blues, this season looked to be very promising, and expectations were that this would be one of the best teams in the National Hockey League.
Let’s be honest it was hard to watch this team for most of the first half of this season. The defense was sloppy, Yeo did not seem to have control of the team, and the players were not buying into his system at all. That is where Berube comes into play.
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I would be lying if I were to say Berube had an immediate impact on this club. It took some readjusting, restructuring of a few systems and most of all, getting the players and coaches on the same page and getting them to believe that they are a good hockey club.
Berube had a big advantage right off the bat that Yeo never had, Berube had coached a lot of these players in the minors and knew their game inside and out.
Robert Thomas, Ivan Barbashev, Mackenzie MacEachern are a few players that Berube knows and trusts. It shows because Berube is throwing his fourth line of MacEachern, Barbashev and Thomas on the ice in key times of hockey games and putting them up against teams’ top lines.
One of the biggest items Berube stressed when he took over was giving this team “confidence.” I agree that this team needed confidence, but I think the number one thing he addressed was giving this club an identity. This team is now a group of men who will not give up on a play and a group of men who will not crumble when a team scores a goal or two on them in a row.
Berube has these guys playing for one another, and it is fun to watch. The defense has done a complete 180 from where they were in the first half of the season. Best of all the team is getting consistent goaltending from Jordan Binnington and Jake Allen is filling in nicely when he is called upon.
All in all, this team has been extremely fun to watch over the past month in a half. The City of St. Louis is buzzing right now with talk about their hometown Blues. It is extremely to early to tell but if this team continues to play like this, they will be a force down the stretch and a team that will make a deep run into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.