The 2018-19 St. Louis Blues are the prime example of how one of their former coaches wanted them to play. It just came too late to benefit him.
Whether you loved or hated Ken Hitchcock, or fell somewhere in between, it is hard to argue that he was one of the most successful coaches in St. Louis Blues history. Outside of Joel Quenneville, nobody has more wins and nobody took the team to greater heights (maybe until now).
The problem Hitchcock ran into was he wanted his teams to play a very demanding style of hockey. He wanted all four lines to go up and down the ice and pay as much detail to their work in the defensive zone as they did on offense.
When you get your team, and stars, playing that way, it is almost always a recipe for success. Hitchcock got Brett Hull his first Stanley Cup in part because Hitch convinced Hull to play a 200-foot game. Hull had to sacrifice a little on the offensive side, but the result was there at the end of that first season with Dallas.
That was the message when Hitchcock came to St. Louis to take over the bench for the Blues. He was able to tell guys that if someone like Hull can do it, anyone can and the results speak for themselves.
The issue is it is almost impossible for 20-plus players to play that way for 82 games and a playoff run. Nevertheless, Hitchcock never let up on the message of playing a full 60 and playing the way he wanted. Perhaps that was one of the reasons his message grew old in St. Louis. It was not necessarily that what he was saying was wrong – in fact he was on point – but when you hear it game after game, year after year, it starts to fall on deaf ears.
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You can lay that at the feet of the players, who suddenly want to ignore instructions that work when implemented. You can also blame the coach for not knowing how to take the same message, repackage it and sell it a different way.
Fast-forward to 2018-19 and we are seeing exactly what Hitchcock always wanted from his teams. The Blues are playing a stifling defensive style that has managed to shut down, or at least keep quiet, some of the best lines in the NHL.
The Blues are playing a heavy game too, which is even more impressive because the team is smaller, overall, than most of the teams Hitchcock had. St. Louis has regularly had over 30 hits in each playoff game, but during the regular season, they often had numbers in the low teens.
St. Louis is also getting offensive production that was missing when Hitchcock was the coach. The Blues never lacked offensive talent in those years, but for whatever reason, the goals would dry up during the playoffs.
The Blues also have complete buy-in. That was a phrase uttered so many times under the Hitchcock regime that we would all be rich if we got a penny for each time someone said it.
St. Louis is doing just about everything exactly the way Craig Berube has drawn it up. If he wants them to take more shots, more shots are taken. If Berube wants less penalties, magically the team puts up less penalties.
This is the perfect example of a Ken Hitchcock team. It just happened a few seasons too late for him to benefit from it.
Nobody is crying for Hitch. He did make his own problems with line tinkering and playing favorites, which is something the team seems to have avoided in this run.
Still, you almost feel for him. Hitchcock has tried things with other teams, taking the bench with Edmonton and Dallas and not coming up with similar success that he saw with the Blues. Maybe he has not been in the right scenario or maybe his message, from his mouth, is just hard to digest.
Whatever the reason, Hitchcock has struggled. Even so, he will go down as one of the more successful coaches in NHL history even if the silverware is not there in high numbers.
Would it not be somewhat ironic if the 2018-19 Blues could win that elusive championship playing just the way one of their ex-coaches always wanted them to? All credit goes to Berube for orchestrating this playoff run and getting the starts to play that way. It is still interesting that this is a Ken Hitchcock team, in overall style, and many of the same players are finally doing all the things that he preached for years.