St. Louis Blues Have Potential To Be A National Team

The St. Louis Blues window of opportunity is wide open. Though those windows can shut quickly, the Blues have a chance to become a nationally followed team.

Even if you’re not a football fan or not a fan of the NFL, you have likely heard the Dallas Cowboys referred to as America’s Team. While that moniker is taken, is it possible for our very own St. Louis Blues to be a nationally followed team?

For those of us that have lived most or all of our lives in St. Louis, the idea sounds preposterous. We’ve had too many great teams, whether they be the Rams or Blues, that still had outsiders turn their noses up for us to think the rest of the country would pay attention.

However, the idea might not be so unrealistic. We need look no further than just down Market Street to the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cardinals gained much or their national appeal from being on KMOX in the heyday of radio. Actor Billy Bob Thornton told the story of how, growing up in Arkansas, he became a Cardinals fan because he could get the KMOX signal where he lived.

That was true of people throughout the country. Familial relationships have kept the fandom going, but the Cardinals have a huge fan base outside of the St. Louis area. If you think all three million that pass through the Busch Stadium are from St. Louis, or even Missouri, you’d be mistaken.

So, why can’t the Blues achieve a similar status from outside areas? The answer is they can and they can’t.

The reason they can is because fans like a winner. Die-hards such as myself or yourself can whine on social media about how long they’ve watched and suffered, etc. Nobody cares.

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For whatever reason, looks can matter and the Blues have a decent looking bunch. I’ll be honest – one of the biggest reasons I’ve heard people don’t like Logan Couture is his looks. Granted, this is from my own inner circle and some social media response, but still.

If we keep this within the confines of the rink, however, the Blues also play a relatively entertaining style while being balanced. They don’t score with the regularity of Tampa Bay, but they don’t pack it in with the boring, defensive style of the New Jersey Devils when they were winning.

That balance can attract old-school fans that like defense, but also those that like scoring too. While some fans complain about a lack of scoring at times, halfway through the 2019-20 season, the only four Western Conference teams have more goals than the Blues and one of those teams is in second to last in the division.

One last reason the Blues could become a nationally followed team is that they already are. While most of us associate Blues fans with being from St. Louis and the team assumes that most of those fans are from West County, the reality is there are Blues fans all over.

Look at the areas just outside of St. Louis. I used to work in DeSoto, Missouri and you wouldn’t think there was anyone who knew hockey down there. There are tons of Blues fans there.

Park Hills, Farmington, St. Clair, Sullivan, Springfield, Jefferson City, Columbia and even out in Kansas City, there are Blues fans all over. There are international Blues fans too.

During the 2019 playoffs, we learned more about the Gibbs family from Fort Frances, Ontario.

Ash Gibbs, born and raised in Canada, became and stayed a Blues fan because of players being from his area and also the style of hockey the Blues played. Gibbs gained notoriety from his picture taken at a game in Winnipeg, but there are lots of others.

St. Louis actually has a reasonably sized fan base north of the border. We are finding out that Blues fans are also scattered throughout the country too.

Watch or listen to any road game in 2019-20 and there have been times it was hard to tell the Blues were on the road. The Blues flipped the script and had a large/loud fan base in the United Center when they played Chicago, which is what Blues fans have had to deal with for years with Chicago fans flooding Enterprise Center.

Though the Blues lost the game, it sounded almost 50/50 between Blues and Arizona Coyotes fans in their New Years Eve game. Games in Florida, California and even Buffalo and the hard to crack Nashville had loads of Blues supporters in there.

There are plenty of wealthy people in St. Louis, but these are not all travelling fans. They are either new fans picked up along the way or transplants that feel emboldened to attend an away game now that their team is atop the NHL.

Add any numbers to that group and you’ve got a truly nationally followed team.

The only thing standing in the Blues way is national perception and a lack of star power.

For whatever reason, we all have weird perceptions about places we have not been to or spent little time in. Any city that is seen as less than the one we live in or the one that houses the team we like is seen as unworthy.

This is not just hockey or even just pro sports. Look at the NBA. Who would have any interest in the Milwaukee Bucks if they did not have the Greek Freak or you did not live in Wisconsin?

Cardinals fans look down on Kansas City all the time. Even though KC now has a larger metro population than St. Louis, there is still this perception of the city being little brother.

College is worse. All arguments and determinations are based on the size of a school, the size of the state or the perception of the area.

Kansas fans wonder how K-State can get good football players because they perceive it being in the middle of nowhere. Conversely, people who have not been to KU’s campus don’t know how great it is.

This team doesn’t deserve that bowl game or shouldn’t be ranked in the top 10 based solely on our own perception of where they come from. How dare an outsider try to wiggle into the ranks of the elite.

The Blues are fighting that uphill battle. They fought it all the way through the 2019 playoffs, right up until they actually won the Stanley Cup. They continue to fight it, as some analysts predicted the Blues would miss the 2020 playoffs.

It’s easy to gain a following if you can sustain success. It is harder when you have media only focused on certain teams only because they have more people in those areas, regardless of whether they care about hockey or not.

A lack of star power is also holding the Blues back. When healthy, Vladimir Tarasenko is the Blues biggest name and he has the skill to be near the top of the league as far as goals go.

However, his unselfishness holds him back and he has yet to crack the 40 goal mark. He is quite shy as well, which can be endearing to a local populous but not as much nationally.

The Blues have other players – great players. Pietrangelo could be a Norris Trophy candidate when he is playing his best. O’Reilly has great skill and won the Conn Smythe.

Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas have speed and skill. Schenn is an old-school power forward who can snipe.

Still, none of them jump off the page. They don’t have the IT factor the way someone like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Aushton Matthews or Connor McDavid do.

We can argue whether you want the star focused fan or not, but they do exist. The NBA has become a league of star fans more than teams.

The Blues have not had that kind of player since Brett Hull. Even then, there were not a ton of Hull jerseys outside of St. Louis.

The Blues have excellent players. They’ve rarely had that player that demands all the eyes on him and demands national games.

That said, the ultimate idea that the Blues could become a nationally followed team is not silly. We have seen more media attention even prior to the Stanley Cup than ever before.

The Blues have played in two nationally televised preseason games. They were awarded a Winter Classic before larger markets such as Dallas or Denver.

The number of games featuring the Blues shown nationally on NBC seems to have increased year by year as well. If the Blues did not have some amount of following outside of St. Louis, the ratings within St. Louis would not dictate a national game.

The Blues also have the story. As pointed out by Anthony Stalter of 101 ESPN, who proposed this idea in the first place, you should never underestimate a good story.

Fans like dominant teams, to love or hate, but they also love the underdog story. Going worst to first, having not won in a team’s 50-plus year existence, having a forgotten goaltender in net, having a sick child as your main fan and more all adds up to a great story. People latch onto that.

Of course, this all boils down to an area of realism. The Blues are never going to be the Pittsburgh Steelers or New York Yankees, etc.

They are perfectly capable of picking up fans though. The Pittsburgh Penguins were not followed nationally until they had Mario Lemieux and then won a few championships.

Nobody cared about the Los Angeles Kings until Wayne Gretzky came. They were forgotten again until they had a pair of Cups.

Time will tell. Ultimately winning will attract the most fans.

The Blues have been one of the best teams of the last decade, with only three teams having more points over that time. Still, winning the Stanley Cup gained or brought fans out of the woodwork. Winning or coming close to another will be what sustains or further builds that fan base outside the area.