Things have been so good for the St. Louis Blues in recent years, we forget the struggles. One thing is for sure, the 2010’s were a lot kinder than the previous decade.
St. Louis Blues fans have a way of getting caught up in the moment, like all sports fans. However, we also have a keen awareness of history because it was constantly against us.
Whether the year was good or bad, the same thing popped up year after year. The Blues had failed to win a Stanley Cup and often found a spectacular way to do so.
The Blues always had their ups and downs. The late-60’s were great, with the team forming and making several finals appearances.
The 70’s were not great. The Blues missed the playoffs three times and regularly finished below .500.
The 80’s were mixed. The Blues had big names like Bernie Federko and Brett Hull, among many others. They also set a then-franchise record of 107 points and made the conference finals for the first time in almost 20 years. The decade also had a lot of heart-breaking playoff exits.
That was true of the 90’s and other seasons in more recent history. However, while not the absolute worst, the first decade of the 2000’s was not overly kind to the Blues.
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There were lots of bright spots. The team made the conference final again in 2001. They set a team record for points with 114 in the spring of 2000 as well.
Unfortunately, the Blues best team of that decade ran into the buzzsaw that was the Colorado Avalanche, complete with destiny’s child Ray Bourque. It felt unfair since the Blues had constantly run into the Detroit Red Wings prior to that.
Then, there was the utter collapse in 2000. The Blues won the Presidents Trophy for the best record in the league. They proceeded to lose two games at home and got knocked out by the eighth seeded San Jose Sharks in seven games.
Things went downhill fast from those disappointments. The Blues were forced to fire the winningest coach in team history, Joel Quenneville, after a slow start to the 2003-04 season.
The lockout completely washed out the 2004-05 season and the Blues started dismantling their team, trading Chris Pronger to cut salary and make the team’s payroll more palatable for sale. Mike Kitchen never had a chance.
Andy Murray came in for a brief bright spot. It seemed as though his attention to detail was what the team needed and they would make a furious run to the 2009 playoffs, only to be swept by Vancouver.
However, as our friends over at St. Louis Game Time pointed out, the decade ended in disaster. The final game of the decade was against the Canucks.
The Blues raced out to a 3-0 lead. The Canucks stormed back and won it in overtime.
Andy Murray lasted into 2010, but only by a couple days and was fired. While I personally liked Murray, he was a micromanager that over analyzed everything and it seemed to drive the players crazy.
That was a necessary move, but also sparked one of the best decades in team history.
Doug Armstrong officially took over as the team’s GM in 2010. His moves were slow and methodical, but bore fruit in a big way.
The coaching spot was a mixed bag. Davis Payne was a disaster, but he was quickly removed and the Blues enjoyed their longest run of success under Ken Hitchcock.
Hitch eventually wore out his welcome, as all hard-nosed coaches do, but he won the second most games in team history and had the best winning percentage of all coaches too.
The Blues surpassed 100 points in four of his first five seasons as coach. They had 60 points in a lockout-shortened season too, which would have put them over 100 points if the season went the full way.
Hitchcock finally got the team to really buy in to his style and they made it all the way to the conference final. Unfortunately, they wasted a little too much energy in finishing off Chicago in the first round and the Dallas Stars in the second. They had clearly lost their gas and lost to San Jose in the conference final.
Armstrong did make the mistake of naming Mike Yeo coach-in-waiting, but the Blues still managed to get 99 points in 2016-17. However, you could tell the cracks were forming and it looked like the decade might end like all the others, with promise but in tatters.
Instead, Armstrong let Yeo go and let Craig Berube take the reigns. Berube had loads of talent after some shrewd moves by Armstrong to pick up players like Brayden Schenn and Ryan O’Reilly without completely mortgaging the future.
Of course, we all know how that story turned out. Berube and company orchestrated one of the biggest turnarounds in team and league history, going from worst to first within a season and claiming the first Stanley Cup in franchise history.
Of course, any time you win a championship, especially if you’ve never done it before, it will set that decade apart. However, it was not just the championship.
The interesting thing about sports is how one season can completely differ from another, yet if you look at an entire decade, things form patterns.
The 2000’s had some ups, but there were a lot of downs. The 2010’s had some downs, but plenty of ups, including some of the best hockey we have seen and a moment in time we will never forget.
Things certainly changed over the course of a decade.