St. Louis Blues: You Want Emotion? Parade Puts St. Louis On The Map

For years, the St. Louis Blues have played the role of understudy to the St. Louis Cardinals. However, on Saturday, one parade showed the world that St. Louis is a hockey town.

St. Louis is often called the Heartland of Hockey and if you ask St. Louisans or St. Louis Blues fans what that means, you will get a passionate, heartfelt response about how much they love their city and their team.

How much does St. Louis love their Blues? Just ask the estimated 500 thousand people who were in attendance to watch their team celebrate through downtown St. Louis. A year of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, and stress and anxiety, culminated into a party the city has never seen before.

In just two hours, the city of St. Louis and the world received an up close and personal look at why the St. Louis Blues, were different than any other team to parade down Market Street after a championship.

Connection. It’s something that Albert Pujols and Kurt Warner had tried to do before during their World Series and Super Bowl victories, but it was nothing like what we saw on Saturday with the Blues.

Something that is not practiced very often by championship teams is getting out of their cars and walking the route, celebrating with the hundreds of thousands of fans lined up to witness the historic occasion. This team did.

Pulling people out of the crowd so that they have an opportunity to touch the Stanley Cup, and hug the players that won it. This team did.

Coming from last place in the league at the new year, to somehow find themselves competing for the Central Division title on the last day of the regular season, not to mention just two months later playing for and eventually winning the Stanley Cup? This team did.

The party for the Blues and the city of St. Louis is nowhere near finished, with the NHL awards taking place later this week in Las Vegas, and training camp opening in the fall, the Blues still have plenty of time to let loose.

Letting loose is something that Jordan Binnington has done a lot of after winning the Stanley Cup in Boston. The runner-up to Ryan O’Reilly for the Conn Smythe Award has put any rumor of him being a robot to rest after making a passionate speech to the fans on stage at the conclusion of the parade.

https://twitter.com/StLouisBlues/status/1140374361771249671

If you have been craving more emotion from the rookie phenom, you got precisely what you wanted on Saturday during the parade. Seen riding miniature bikes, being the center of attention at OB Clark’s, and plenty more partying before, during and after the parade, Binnington is just one of many Blues players capable of letting loose.

This parade, however, was as much for the players as it was for the city. Criticized for its shortcomings over the past two years, most notably being chastised for being a one-sport town, St. Louis was on display for the whole world to see and it did not disappoint.

The city was on full display throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the deeper the Blues went in the tournament, the more the national media came to support the fans behind the note.

Only 20 of the player’s names will be added to the Stanley Cup, but the league might as well add roughly 318 thousand more names for everyone who lives in St. Louis or calls themselves a St. Louisan. The players made it clear on Saturday, this one was for St. Louis.