The St. Louis Blues have not been the kind of team that everyone expected they would be following the magical and surprising ending to the 2024-25 season. There is one player in particular who has been the most surprising, and many believed that his anticipated performance for this season was one of the more concrete and solid ones.
Goaltender Jordan Binnington has been a whirlwind in net and one of the Blues' biggest detriments this season. Sure, you can blame the defence in front of him, which is completely justifiable. But, at this point in the season and this many occurrences in a row, the blame has to be on Binnington and Binnington alone.
Why has it been such a surprising year for fans? Was this eventually going to happen?
Binnington's season wasn't supposed to go like this
After the Four Nations Face-off last season, Binnington was lights out for the Blues down the stretch and into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He took the best team in hockey last season, Winnipeg, to the final seconds of game seven. But that seems like it was years ago now following this season's letdown.
With a record of 8-13-6, with a shutout and a Goals Against Average of 3.59, it has been a rough go this season for Binnington. For goaltenders, only Samuel Ersson of Philadelphia and Frederik Andersen of Carolina are the only two goaltenders with 21 or more games played this season to have a worse save percentage than Binnington, which currently stands at an abysmal .869.
This horrific statline is backed up by a similarly bad eye test. The Blues have really gotten behind the 8-ball with No. 50 in net, and right now, it seems like this team belongs to back-up goalie Joel Hofer.
Was this supposed to happen this soon?
Is it just a down year? Is it Father Time starting to catch up? Is the defense in front of him just that bad? All of those questions may or may not have answered the season-long question for Binnington's troubles, but one thing is for certain. Nobody believed that he would be the one to have a bad year.
Last season's ending should have catapulted him into the statosphere of the NHL elite for goaltending. Binnington was stellar, and accountable. It is amazing how much further from that he has gotten this season.