St. Louis Blues Top 6 Playoff Performances In History

3 of 7

The St. Louis Blues have a rich playoff history, despite their lack of overall success. Even within history, some performances stand above the other.

The St. Louis Blues have only been around for 52 seasons. In the grand scope of the NHL, that is still just a few blinks of the eye.

Despite that, the Blues have a lot of playoff experience. In 50-plus years, the Blues have only missed the playoffs a total of nine times. That is a staggering number.

The Blues might not have a Stanley Cup (yet), but there have been so many performances that stand out. The Blues have so many fans that care that come up with their own moments, whether due to emotion or on-ice action or whatever.

Sometimes a performance can be one game alone. Sometimes it can be one series and others it might cover several weeks during the spring.

With that in mind, we are going to list some of the biggest performances in Blues history. It is hard to widdle it all down to small numbers, but I did my best.

Also, if you’re curious why it is six and not a number like five – it is because I felt like it. Now, on with the festivities.

Jacques Plante

Sometimes Jacques Plante gets overlooked in Blues history. We often muddle up his timeline.

I used to think the Blues acquired both him and Glenn Hall in the expansion draft, but Plante did not join the Blues until the following season in 1968-69.

It might have been a blow to fellow future Hall of Famer Hall, but they formed one of the most dynamic duos in team history. For the second straight year, the Blues made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.

Plante was given the start for every game until the Final too. He won eight games in a row as the Blues went undefeated in the first two rounds, sweeping the Philadelphia Flyers and Los Angeles Kings.

Plante had three shutouts combined against L.A. and Philadelphia. It was not until facing the Montreal Canadiens, Plante’s former team, that he ever felt outmatched.

The Blues did not even think about playing Hall until the Canadiens came to town. St. Louis made the switch, hoping it would help contain the mighty Montreal squad, but that was never a goaltending issue. Montreal was just that much better than the Blues.

Despite that roadblock, Plante was near unbeatable that playoff season. He posted a .950 save percentage and allowed a paltry 1.43 goals against.

The .950 tied a career best, which he equaled in the 1960 playoffs where he won a Stanley Cup with Montreal. The 1.43 was the second best in his career, coming up just short of his amazing 1.35 in that same 1960 run.

There will be doubters that still want to bring up the Blues going the easier route in the expansion side of the conference, but you are still playing a smaller, thus more talented talent pool, so it is a wash. Plante shut them all down.

Scott Young

Blues history is littered with players that were great when you look back at thing, but they were not highly valued when they were here. Scott Young is just one of those players.

Young was always a good player and solid in the playoffs. He won two Cups, one with Pittsburgh and one with Colorado.

Troy Brouwer

Troy Brouwer, we barely knew ye. Despite that, Brouwer thrust himself into St. Louis legend with his playoff performance in the spring of 2016.

Brouwer only spent one season with the Blues. It was a productive season too, scoring 18 goals and 39 points. That was a dip from his average with the Washington Capitals, but Brouwer was playing mainly a third line role with the Blues for much of the season. Those are good numbers for a third liner and decent even for a second line wing.

However, it was his leadership and locker room skills that brought Brouwer to St. Louis. The prior offseason, Doug Armstrong was looking for someone who had been through the playoff wars and come out the other side to help his struggling core get over the hurdle.

Once the playoffs began, Brouwer lived up to that and more. He claimed the 2016 playoffs as his own and led a tired and beaten down Blues team to the Western Conference Finals before they ran out of gas.

In 20 playoff games that season, Brower had eight goals and 13 points. That put him second on the team in goals for the playoffs and tied for third in scoring.

The only people that truly had better postseasons than Brouwer that year were David Backes and Vladimir Tarasenko. Tarasenko was a Chicago Blackhawks killer and had nine goals overall. Backes had three game winning goals as part of his seven goals overall.

However, it was Brouwer’s one game winner that put him in St. Louis history. Brower, a former Blackhawk who won a Cup in Chicago in 2010, eliminated his former team with the series clinching goal.

Unfortunately for fans, that goal was not late in the period or in overtime. We had to sweat out the last 10-plus minutes before we could finally celebrate a series win over Chicago. That had not happened since 2002.

Oddly enough, that was the only goal he scored against Chicago. His other seven goals came against Dallas and San Jose, including two in a win over the Sharks in the Western Conference Finals.

The Blues might have come up short that season. It was not for lack of effort on Brouwer’s part.

Glenn Hall

Some people think Glenn Hall might have been the greatest goaltender ever. He definitely was one of the best of his generation. Oddly enough, one of those that challenge him for that spot is Plante, who also suited up for the Blues.

They often say those that do it first, do it best however. That is the main reason Hall gets on this list.

More from Bleedin' Blue

Hall had better numbers with other teams. In his Stanley Cup year with Chicago, he has a .927 save percentage and a 2.02 goals against.

When he came to St. Louis, there was a slight learning curve, but it was too talented of a team to be denied. Hall was a big part of that 1967-68 Blues team’s success.

Interestingly, Hall ended up with a sub .500 record that year. He had eight wins and 10 losses. Still, Hall picked up eight impressive wins with a team that had never been through the playoff grind as a unit.

It took seven games, but Hall defeated the Philadelphia Flyers and Minnesota North Stars en route to a Stanley Cup Final berth in the Blues very first year of existence. Some might say it is more impressive that Vegas did it in time when half the league was not expansion teams. However, you had a smaller talent pool, so more of the players were the absolute best during Hall’s time.

Hall was tested during that 1968 playoff run too. Eight games went to overtime for that Blues team.

Of those eight games, three went to double-overtime. That kept Hall on the ice for a whopping 1108 minutes, just during the playoffs. For comparison, Hall played just over 2800 minutes that regular season in 49 games.

During that first season in team history he posted a .916 save percentage and a 2.44 goals against. They may not seem like stellar numbers, but given the time period, it was good and it was good enough for that team.

If nothing else, you cannot discount the first goaltender to lead the Blues to a Stanley Cup Final. We can argue until we are blue in the face about this era vs. that era, but you are still representing as one of the top two teams in the league.

That Blues team was a little looser defensively than they would become over the next two seasons. Thus, more responsibility fell to Hall to keep the pucks out and take his team as far as they could go, which is exactly what he did.

Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky has an odd place in Blues history. We all know him as one of, if not the greatest player to play the game.

So, there are still Blues fans, including myself, that jump at the chance to mention his small part in Blues history. On the flip side, it was a mere blip in the history of both the team and the player.

Gretzky only played three months in a Blues uniform before he was basically forced out by the team’s foolish willingness to keep Mike Keenan. We also tend to focus on the turnover too.

In a heated series against the Detroit Red Wings, the Blues were in overtime in Detroit. It was a Gretzky turnover at the attacking blue line that gave the puck to Steve Yzerman, who went down and fired it past Jon Casey. Personally, I blame Casey for that, but you would expect a little better from the best player ever.

That said, we forget how good he actually was in his brief time here. In 18 regular season games with the Blues, the Great One had eight goals and 21 points.

Gretzky was solid in the playoffs too. While we remember that final moment with the turnover, we forget that he was more than a point per game scorer in the postseason with St. Louis.

Gretzky only had two goals that playoff run, but both of them came in wins in the Detroit series. He had 16 points in 13 games during that playoff season too.

Gretzky was instrumental in guiding the Blues past Toronto in the first round of the playoffs. He had three assists in two different games against the Maple Leafs. That became even more important once the Leafs injured Grant Fuhr and offense became even more of a focal point.

That postseason may not have been vintage Great One, but we got to see flashes. It was enough to whet our appetite for what the combination of Gretzky and Brett Hull could do.

Unfortunately, we never got to see that come to fruition. Even so, Gretzky was better than most on the Blues, leading all scorers in points. It is a shame we mainly remember him for a bad thing.

ST. LOUIS, MO – DECEMBER 31: Adam Oates #12 of the St. Louis Blues and Brett Hull #16 of the St. Louis Blues get ready prior to a game against the Chicago Blackhawks during the 2017 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic Alumni Game at Busch Stadium on December 31, 2016 in St. Louis, Missouri (Photo by Scott Rovak/NHLI via Getty Images) /

Brett Hull/Adam Oates

Ok, if we are honest, I’m cheating a little bit here including two in one. But, it’s my list so there.

Truthfully, it is hard to separate Brett Hull and Adam Oates when it comes to playoff performances. Some of their best work all-time in their careers came when playing with one another.

We saw it really come together quickly in the 1990 postseason following the 1989-90 season. In that playoff run, the Blues got a total of 15 goals and 35 points with this duo in only 12 games. Unfortunately, they came up just short against the Chicago Blackhawks in the second round in a tough seven-game series.

The next year, the Blues got even more out of those two. Hull and Oates combined for 18 goals and 39 points in 13 games of the 1991 playoffs.

Sadly, they came up short again in the second round. St. Louis lost in six games to the eventual conference champions, the Minnesota North Stars.

It was nothing those two were doing or not doing that kept the Blues from advancing. As a team, they just could not lock down defensively, giving up 35 goals in those two series.

Still, Hull and Oates shined brightly before it burned out. Due to outside circumstances, like Hull and Gretzky, they never got the chance to shine for very long.

They only had two seasons together and two playoff runs. Nevertheless, you cannot overlook how huge their contributions were.

Next. Blues All-Decade Team: 1990's. dark

Scoring a total of 33 goals and 74 points in four rounds of playoffs and 25 games is a huge chunk of change. Sadly, they are another page in the history of the Blues never having all the pieces in place at the right time. You can’t hold that against them, though, with those numbers.

Home / All-Time Lists