St. Louis Blues: Current All Star Format Won’t Reward St. Louis

The St. Louis Blues have so many guys performing at a level that should be recognized league wide. The current All Star format will not provide that.

The St. Louis Blues are not having a polar opposite start to the 2019-20 to that of 2018-19, but it is pretty close. With the exception of a few days here or there, the Blues have been tops in the Central Division from the get go and also topped the Western Conference a good deal of the year too.

You cannot have a good start without good players. The Blues have plenty of good players and plenty who are having fantastic seasons.

David Perron and Brayden Schenn both lead the team with 15 goals through 36 games. That puts them on pace for 34 goals, which would be career highs for both of them.

Ryan O’Reilly is currently on pace for 73 points. That would not eclipse his career high, but it would definitely be close.

Vladimir Tarasenko was not scoring at the clip some fans would like prior to his injury, but he had 10 points through 10 games. 82 points seems a stretch, but who knows. He looked confident until he got hurt.

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The same could be said for Sammy Blais. Eight points is not a ton through 20 games for Blais, but he had five goals and they were all coming at opportune times.

Alex Pietrangelo is having a career year. If he keeps up his current pace, he would tie his career highs for goals and points.

Jordan Binnington is Jordan Binnington. His numbers are not mind-bogglingly good, but he’s top 20 of all goalies for goals against and save percentage and Ben Bishop and Connor Hellebuyck are the only ones giving him a run for his money in the division.

What do all these numbers mean? They mean the Blues have enough talent on their team to field their own All-Star team.

In the past, when it was conference against conference, the Blues would have an argument to have at least three guys on the team. When you are fielding an entire team, that it much more realistic. Even guys like Jaden Schwartz or Oskar Sundqvist would have an outside shot.

However, in the current format, the Blues are out of luck. Unless the Blues get one of their players voted in as team captain, they are unlikely to get more than one player on the team with the three-on-three format.

There are only 11 players on each team from each division. Assuming there is a player representing each team, of which there are seven in the Central Division, that leaves only four extra spots.

As mentioned, Binnington is having a good year, but you could easily see Bishop, Hellebuyck or even Robin Lehner steal one of the two spots allotted to goaltenders.

Pietrangelo has a decent shot at making it, but with only three defenders making each All-Star team, you could see him get the cold shoulder. Cale Makar, Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis all have more points than Petro, but it would be a shame for the captain of the Stanley Cup champions to miss out on an All-Star game in his own town.

Forward seems the better bet for the Blues to get multiple names on the team. The counter to that is that Winnipeg has four forwards of their own with a case. Patrick Kane will likely make another appearance and Nathan McKinnon is a lock.

The Blues will have a representative. There is no doubt of that.

It is just a kick in the pants for St. Louis to finally host an All-Star game for the first time in over 20 years and have the number of players selected be potentially low. It especially stings because so many are worthy.

In the past, there have been years where you could make the case that only one guy deserved it. There was even a year or two that there might have been no Blues if it was not required each team have a representative.

Now, the Blues have a case for anywhere between four to six players to be All-Stars. Because of the format, it might only be one.

Time will tell, but chalk this up as (potentially) another reason to hate three-on-three hockey.