St. Louis Blues: Craig Berube A Look Back And The Look Ahead

The St. Louis Blues just over one year ago fired Mike Yeo and named Craig Berube interim after the Blues were blanked for the third time in four games and sitting at 7-9-3 on the season. The search for the next bench boss was on.

Doug Armstrong named Craig Berube the interim head coach and announced that the Blues front office would cast a wide net in their search for the next head coach of the St. Louis Blues.

No stone was to be left unturned. Head Coaches in the College, Juniors, AHL, and International ranks as well as former NHL head coaches would be in consideration. The front office was determined to find the right guy for the job.

In the meantime, Craig Berube quietly went to work. In his introduction interview sitting alongside Doug Armstrong facing the media for the official announcement of the new interim head coach Berube stated,” The way I see it we have a really good team here. What I need to do is get their confidence back. We have a severe lack of confidence and I need to get it back for these guys.”

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Berube, or Chief as he is nicknamed, stepped into the locker room and tore down the standings hanging in there.

He told his team he didn’t care what that thing said. He said we’re a good hockey team. Regardless of the standings, we’re a good hockey team. It’s time we start playing like one. The beginning of the accountability standards were being laid right then and there.

Chief slowly, methodically, and almost with surgical like precision began to inject confidence in the players. He instilled a new and simple game plan. Get back to playing St. Louis Blues like defense, control the puck, and grind down the opposition.

Forechecking and backchecking tenaciously were the mantras of the forward groups. Berube started to instill a team-first mentality. He got veteran forwards like Alex Steen to truly lead the way in this mentality when he accepted a role on the fourth line.

This was pivotal. It demonstrated to the team that even guys like Alex Steen, the longest-tenured St. Louis Blue believed and cared about the team first and believed in Craig Berube.

Steen was a regular on the top two lines and a huge minutes player. Moving, or being “demoted” to a fourth-line role as an ultimate display of this team-first attitude that every Blue began to buy into.

A few months later a young and unknown goaltender by the name of Jordan Binnington stepped in as the new backup. It was time for another player to display that team-first mentality and attitude and this player did so in spades.

With the emergence of Binnington Jake Allen, who had been struggling for the past few seasons, had to play backup to Binnington. Like Alex Steen, Jake Allen accepted his role and embraced it.

Being a team-first guy, Allen has been credited by Binnington himself as a primary reason for his success. That Alen displayed the ultimate team-first attitude and worked very hard with Binner get him ready for games and reviewing scouting reports on opposing shooters.

The rest is history. The Blues, being galvanized by their new head coach, and believing in the team first went on to a historic run to the Stanley Cup Finals and ultimately hoisting the first-ever championship for the St. Louis Blues.

Craig Berube had accomplished the impossible. He took a downtrodden, confidence less team and raised them up to the pinnacle of hockeydom!

Well, it’s been a year since that day Craig Berube was named interim. The interim tag is gone and Chief has a three-year contract as the Blues head bench boss now.

A new season is underway and the winning has continued. Much like the course of last season, the St. Louis Blues and their head coach are encountering adversity. It hasn’t shown in their record as they sit atop the central division and shrugging off any thoughts of a championship hangover.

No, the team just keeps winning. It’s taken a lot of overtime for the majority of those wins, but the wins keep coming. The adversity is coming in another form this season.

As opposed to last season where the team was facing the adversity of the huge hole they dug themselves into and trying to get out of all while hopefully securing a playoff spot.

The team has confidence in spades. They have lost their premier goal-scorer in Vladimir Tarasenko presumably for the entire regular season and shortly afterward lost the man who was pivotal in assisting Chief’s efforts to change the culture to a team-first attitude in Alex Steen.

Steen doesn’t light up the scoreboard like he used to, but as Darren Pang, the Blues on ice commentator has dubbed him, he “fixes” lines. He’s “the fixer”.

Steen was being moved up and down the line up early this season from the fourth to the third, to the first and second. Steen was tasked with jump-starting the play of each line he visited. He was instructed how that line performs best and he was to go out there and execute that in order for the rest of the line to see what they were not doing in order to be successful.

With Steen out and now Sammy Blais the Chief is going to have to find ways to keep the guys believing. Keep the guys pushing for each other and as he did ever so subtly in their dramatic run from worst to first he will need to continue to tinker with the lines in order to get maximum effort from all of his guys.

The Blues aren’t going to blow other teams away offensively today. They will and can continue to win so long as they play like they did against Tampa Bay on Tuesday night. They played a shot stifling style of team defense and ground the Lightning down.

That style, that attitude, that grind is a byproduct of the man behind the pine. Berube may have thought that last season was going to be difficult, but the way the injury bug is rearing its ugly head this season may spell some of the toughest coaching he will face yet.

In Chief we trust! Why wouldn’t we? He’s proven he knows these players and knows how to motivate them. He has found ways to drag these guys from the mud and lift them up to champs. Goals will be tough, but the system and the attitude that Berube has instilled in this team will find a way. Adversity is the catalyst for this team as it proved to be throughout the playoffs last year.

It won’t all be rainbows and puppy dogs! Bad times will come, but with Berube at the helm, the bad times won’t last long. That has been proven already. A repeat is not out of the question for this tenacious team!

Drop the puck!