The St Louis Blues' newest players will also adopt their own sweater numbers, with some wearing familiar numbers in the Blues' franchise history and others a little more unique. After dealing star RW Jordan Kyrou to the Washington Capitals in exchange for Connor McMichael and some other offseason moves, the newly acquired players officially have their team numbers for this upcoming season. Let's explore the history behind the numbers 25, 49, 77, and 83.
#25: 30 players, now Brandon Carlo
Obviously, Jordan Kyrou was the last person to wear 25 for St Louis before his trade to Washington, but before him came a laundry list of players in the franchise's history to wear 25. Defenseman Chris Butler wore 25 before Kyrou, playing 5 years with the Blues from 2015-2019, totaling 58 games with only 4 goals and 7 assists for 11 points.
It must've been a lucky number of sorts if you played for St Louis with the number 25, given that it has now had a total of 29 players used on it. Now, former Leafs defenseman Brandon Carlo will take this number, making him the 30th player in franchise history to do so. Carlo has big shoes to fill, as Kyrou's tenure with the 25 saw him total nearly 500 career games with 168 goals and 210 assists for 378 points in 8 seasons with St Louis. Carlo, meanwhile, has not really had much goalscoring or offensive prowess, and his last majority season came in 2024/25 when he split that season playing for the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The best player to ever wear #25 for the Blues in franchise history was Chuck Lefley, a left winger (oddly enough) who wore the Blues sweater for 5 seasons like Butler from 1974 to 1981, his first season with the Blues split via a trade from the Montreal Canadiens. His first full season with the Blues in 1975/76 saw him notch a then-franchise single-season record 43 goals and 42 assists for 85 points, a record that stood until Brett Hull utterly demolished it in 1990/91, with his unbelievable 86-goal season. That's actually 3rd all-time for the entire league's single-season goalscoring record, behind 2 separate seasons from who else but Wayne Gretzky.
#49: 4 players, now Ross Johnston
Here kicks off one of the more unique numbers to be worn by a Blues player, and this upcoming season, it'll be worn by Ross Johnston, who came over in free agency from the Ducks after a 3-year stint in Anaheim. This will be Johnston's 3rd team, after the 32-year-old Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island native started his career in Long Island, playing 7 seasons with the Isles from 2015 to 2023. As for the best player in Blues history to wear the number 49, there's no other obvious choice than Ivan Barbashev. Barbie was a standout 7-year veteran on the Blues and has since continued to dominate with the Vegas Golden Knights. While in St Louis, his 7-year career saw him notch 78 goals and 100 assists for 178 points in 410 games. So far in Vegas, where he was traded to midway through the 2022/23 season (when Vegas ended up winning the Stanley Cup lol), he's matched that total almost, with 71 goals and 102 assists for 173 points in 257 games.
#77: 7 players, now Connor McMichael
Quite a lot of 7 themes in this one, with the Caps' McMicheal being the newest recipient of the double lucky-numbered sweater. Nick Bjugstad and Pierre Olivier Joseph were the last two players to wear 77, which has been commonly used by this team in the last decade. The best player to wear 77 was Pierre Turgeon, a legendary defenseman who, like the others in this list, played 5 seasons in St Louis from 1996 to 2001 and, like Lefley, if you remember from earlier, he also split his first games with the Blues after a trade from Montreal, just 2 decades apart in Turgeon's case. 2000/01 was Turgeon's best season with the Blues, even though it was his last before moving on to two now Central Division rivals in Dallas and Colorado. That season saw Turgeon total 30 goals and 52 assists for 82 points in all but 3 regular-season games. Turgeon's 5-year stint with the Blues totaled 134 goals and 221 assists for 355 points in 327 games wearing the Blue Note sweater. Most of that time, he'd average over 70 points a season, a truly remarkable consistency.
#83: McTavish the first
That's right- no player in Blues franchise history has ever worn the number 83 until Mason McTavish does this season. We're keeping with the unique numbers for this one, and it'll also be a new number for McTavish himself, as he wore 23 and then 37 with Anaheim. But since both those numbers are occupied by the Blues' Logan Mailloux and Jack Finley, McTavish had to pick something else to sport. 83 isn't the only number to have never been worn in franchise history either. There are, in fact, 12 sweater numbers that haven't ever been picked by a new Blues player, those being 60, 66, 67, 69, 84, 85, 87, and 94 through 98.
It'll be interesting to see how much these new number wearers for the Blues will perform in their first seasons with the team, set to play in their 60th anniversary season this October, although they actually began play 59 seasons ago. But who's counting technicalities like that?
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