St. Louis Blues Finish Unbelievable Year: Jordan Binnington

The St. Louis Blues run to a Stanley Cup championship had many heroes. Perhaps none became so beloved so quickly as Jordan Binnington.

The St. Louis Blues fans and the position of goaltender has almost always had a love/hate relationship. There have been a few exceptions here or there, but in recent history, fans have loved to hate the position.

Only Philadelphia has seemed to have a more volatile situation over their history in net. I have long joked that you could put Jesus in net and Blues fans would still find a way to rip on him.

But fans have also realized how important the position is. They have long wanted that savior to come along and deliver them a Stanley Cup. They were usually just unrealistic with how good a goalie needed to be in the regular season.

How interesting that the one to emerge from a long line of disappointments would be the least likely one. Perhaps that is the most St. Louis Blues thing that could happen. Like the team nobody expected to win finally did, the goaltender nobody expected to be this good actually was.

Jordan Binnington’s story is one that will go down in the history books of St. Louis sports. It has to rival that of Kurt Warner for sheer brilliance.

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The Blues drafted Binnington way back in 2011. You might wonder how a goaltender as good as Binnington proved to be could go under the radar for that long.

Firstly, goaltenders take longer to groom than normal players. Perhaps it is the mental part of the position or something else, but you rarely see 18-year old goaltenders in the NHL.

Binnginton was forced to bide his time in the minor leagues, but things kept looking more and more bleak. There was always someone above him in the depth chart.

When the team drafted Binnington, they had just brought in Jaroslav Halak the summer before. They brought in Brian Elliott that same summer and also still had Ben Bishop in the organization.

Halak only lasted a few seasons and Elliott a couple after that. Bishop got dealt off to Tampa Bay, but that was to make room for Jake Allen. It seemed there was always someone valued more than Binnington.

Maybe it was his personality. While there is a definite dry wit there, we have seen Binnington does not just pop out at you the way he speaks. Whatever the reason, he was under the radar of everyone.

The story will change from here to the future, but the truth is nobody knew he could be this good. Fans, coaches and general managers all took a pass.

Binnington did not have anyone banging on his door to pick him up. That is why he was repeatedly forced to sign one-year, qualifying offers.

Of course you have the extra motivation for him of being loaned out to the Providence Bruins in the 2017-18 season. Much is made of that now being a slight on him, but the reality is it was just the reality of the Blues.

It was not so much a knock on Binnington, but the situation of the Blues minor league system. The Blues did not have a minor league affiliate and only had one spot to put two goalies.

The Blues did ask Binnington to play with their ECHL affiliated team, but again that was more in an attempt to keep him in their organization so they could be in charge of playing time. Nobody, including myself, will ever fault Binnington for turning down the ECHL, but it was not a personal knock, even if it did give him extra personal motivation.

On top of all that, Binnington was still not truly considered for the Blues in 2018-19. They went out and signed veteran backup Chad Johnson to be the alternate to Allen.

Binnington got his looks in preseason, but did not show what he was capable of. Thus, he got sent to San Antonio of the AHL and promptly placed behind Ville Husso on the depth chart.

Oddly enough, that is when things truly turned for Binnington. Like the Blues, San Antonio got off to a bad start and so did Husso.

The team turned to Binnington and he got his game going in the AHL, which is something we should have expected since he was so good in Providence the year before. In fact, Binnington was good enough with that Bruins team that he got more playing time than their own prospects for a long period of time.

Binnington was peaking in December and that was perfect timing for the Blues. They had no choice but to let go of Johnson as he was clearly not the answer and the team struggled with Allen in net, no matter how well the Snake tried to play.

Binnington’s first game in the NHL was a shutout of the Philadelphia Flyers on January 7, 2019. In case you are wondering, that is also the weekend that Gloria became the Blues theme song, though nobody found out for awhile after.

Binnington shot himself right into the rookie of the year race by going 24-5-1 the rest of the season. He posted a 1.87 goals against and a .927 save percentage. While the entire team turned their game around, he was a huge reason the Blues surged into first place and then hung on for a third place divisional finish.

His story would have been good enough just with all of that. He was not done though.

Binnington had more hiccups in the playoffs than the regular season, but he would always bounce back. After allowing six goals against Winnipeg, he made 37 saves the next game.

After the handpass game against the San Jose Sharks, Binnington went into brick wall mode. He only allowed two goals in the next three games, including a Game 5 shutout.

He did struggle in two of the three losses to Boston, posting a .737 and .831 save percentage in those game. However, just when national media was turning on him and Boston media was coming up with the ridiculous idea that he was vulnerable, he shut them all up.

Binnington should have had a shutout in Game 7 if not for a little lapse in the defense. He single-handedly won the Stanley Cup for the Blues with his first period and then game-changing sprawling pad save later on.

Like Warner before him, Binnington capped off his story with the ultimate prize. The guy that showed no emotion won the Stanley Cup.

Afterward, we finally saw some raw emotion out of the guy. He could not help but smile and act like a normal human being instead of a puck stopping machine.

In the end, this is actually just the beginning of Binnington’s story. He is classified as a rookie in the NHL, so he has a long career ahead of him.

However, to go from a place that makes you wonder if you want to keep playing hockey to the pinnacle in such a short span is quite remarkable.

The only thing holding him back now is the future and how calm he can stay. St. Louis is not the east or west coast when it comes to scrutiny, but fans find a way to turn on players. Especially when the bar is set so high with a position that few truly understand, Binnington will have little room for error in the court of public opinion.

That is for future people to decide. Right now, he is the sports hero of us all.

Hockey, perhaps more than any other, is a team sport to its core. More than any other sport, the goaltender can influence the outcome more than any other individual.

So, it is almost impossible to not say Binnington won the Cup for St. Louis. Other people came up big in other moments, but Game 7 was Binnington’s moment.