St. Louis Blues Hangover Cure Isn’t Drinking Chicken Embryos

The biggest question heading into any new season for the defending champs is whether or not there will be a hangover, and the St. Louis Blues are about to answer it.

Whether or not a raw egg is actually a chicken embryo is not important, but I’m sure many St. Louis Blues fans tried to find their best hangover cure when the team was failing to meet expectations in the first half of last season.

The cure to a Stanley Cup hangover is not something you eat or drink, and it’s not some pill you can take to ease the headaches of your team winning the Cup and then struggling the next season.

Instead, the Blues cure to a Stanley Cup hangover is youth, and St. Louis has plenty of it ahead of the 2019-20 season.

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The Blues do have some older players on their roster that are returning from winning their first Stanley Cup. Jay Bouwmeester and Alex Steen will enter the season as the Blues’ oldest players at 35 years old, but other than that, St. Louis only has four other players over the age of 30.

The average age of the 2020 Blues team is 27.4, which sets the club up perfectly with a mix of veterans, and young players ready to make an impact.

St. Louis had the best offseason in franchise history. Each player and staff member got to spend the day with the best trophy in sports, and a lot of them used it to show love to the communities that helped them along the way.

However, despite all the sunshine and rainbows, the Blues had the shortest offseason to get physically fit for the 2020 season as some teams have not taken the ice since April.

Most of the Blues escaped the Stanley Cup run healthy, although players like Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Robert Thomas had to nurse injuries throughout the offseason and could still need time in training camp to rest.

If any player is not ready to go to start the year, then St. Louis will need to count on their young guns to take a spot and run with it on day one.

The players who could benefit the most from lackluster play from the regulars are Jordan Kyrou and Klim Kostin.

This training camp might be the most important camp of their young careers because it could be the year they really start to turn the heads of the Blues’ coaching staff and front office.

Kyrou made that impression last season. He had a stellar preseason that led him to lead the Blues in points and subsequently created the opening night roster.

With Ivan Barbashev having resigned on a two-year deal, it takes away a potential spot for both Kyrou and Kostin. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t places to put him.

When Pat Maroon departed to Tampa, a spot on the team’s third line opened. Sammy Blais filled this role occasionally last season and could be a prime candidate to retake the spot.

Just thinking about all the young players who could end up as healthy scratches furthers my point of confidence heading into the new season.

Even if you use the Ron Swanson method to cure a hangover of eating a large flank steak pan-fried in salted butter while wearing wet socks, it still might not be as effective as inserting youth into the lineup.