With the 2024 NHL offseason coming to a close and players gearing up for preseason camps and soon for preseason games, St. Louis Blues fans have mixed feelings about everything that went down. The Blues didn't make the big splash, but perhaps that's for the best.
As usual, when the free agency period started, Blues social media was flooded with the meme of the guy poking the Blues logo and asking it to do something. The Blues were fairly quiet and many, myself included, felt they may even do nothing at all.
It had become apparent that the Blues were not going to Band-Aid their situation like their neighbors, the St. Louis Cardinals. They were going to give their prospects a proper look.
Nevertheless, Doug Armstrong never sits and does nothing, even if fans want him to do more. He started slowly.
He added some depth pieces, signing a few veterans and journeymen to fill out the bottom six. These were definitely not prestige moves, but the 2023-24 Blues got pushed around a lot and often nobody stuck up for their teammates. The grit Armstrong added will provide much needed protection for guys like Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou.
Nobody would have called you crazy if you thought those simple moves would be it. The Blues don't seem interested in giving their high-profile prospects bottom-three minutes, i.e. fourth line, so they were forcing the guys to earn spots higher up the roster.
St. Louis then picked up Mathieu Josph and Alexandre Texier. Again, not flashy, but proven bottom-six forwards that fit a role and style. For a team that some consider barely in the playoff hunt, it's once again forcing their prospects to earn spots instead of just being handed anything. It gave the reaction of hmm, ok let's see where this goes.
Suddenly, the Blues went overboard picking up defensemen. We went from wondering if you had enough NHL-ready guys to fill the spots to wondering where everyone will fit and whether there's enough ice time to keep all these players happy.
The Blues signed Ryan Suter for almost nothing. They picked up Pierre-Olivier Joseph, which seemed like nothing more than reuniting him with his brother, but could be a shrewd depth pickup.
Then Armstrong whipped out the grapefruits. Going against the unwritten rule, which nobody knows why it's so worrisome, Army signed Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway from Edmonton to offer sheets, knowing the Oilers had practically zero hope of re-signing them due to their impending cap crunch and need to hang on to Leon Draisaitl.
The Blues were almost guaranteed to get at least one of those two. They ended up getting both.
Suddenly, the Blues made things quite interesting for 2024-25. While people will call me crazy, it reminds me of 2018, prior to the 2018-19 season.
While none of these additions have the pizazz of trading for Ryan O'Reilly, the bottom line is that the offseason as a whole rings very similarly. In hindsight, people forget how blase fans were about that offseason.
The fanbase was split on the re-addition of David Perron for another go around. Getting Tyler Bozak was fine, but also a bit of a yawner if that was the team's only big move.
Adding O'Reilly was huge in terms of getting a playmaking center, but there was also a smattering of fans wondering if we had given up to much. Regardless, there was a lot of hope going into that year, but the majority of fans thought the team might contend for a division at best.
The prevailing thought was these were all good additions to plug the gap until the youth - Thomas and Kyrou - were ready. When those two came along, plus any other draft picks, then the Blues would challenge for the biggest prize.
Well, Thomas was ready, but only for a lessened role while combined with the vets of Bozak and Pat Maroon. All the additions ended up being gigantic cogs in that championhsip puzzle.
Bozak was the perfect mentor for Thomas. Maroon was the physicality the Blues needed and scored that series ending goal against Dallas - that was just a minor thing, right?
O'Reilly wasn't the top center pairing we had hoped for with Vladimir Tarasenko, but he turned out to be the perfect two-way player and leader. An offseason that just looked pretty good ended up ending 50-plus years of heartache.
I'm not saying this 2024-25 team is poised to do the same. I don't have the same kind of hope that I felt back then, even if I was also one of the people that thought that was the stepping stone for something that was a year or two away.
Still, there is every chance that this offseason has sped up the re-tool more than anyone believes. The Blues still lack some higher end talent, but maybe that's what this franchise does.
We couldn't win with the likes of Gretzky, Hull or Shanahan. It was a team that came together in all the right ways, that was greater than the sum of its parts, that won it all.
The Blues turned a position of huge doubt - the defense - into something that has the potential to be very good. They have options. You can go with the steady pairing of Colton Parayko and Nick Leddy on top, or maybe you have Broberg up there and suddenly you have two guys with that condor-like wing span like Parayko and Jay Bouwmeester.
No matter who you pick from Faksa, Joseph or Holloway, you have grit and tenacity that was lacking the last couple years. The Blues have depth down the middle just like 2018-19 too.
Again, I don't think you have the higher quality that team had, but you have options. You are not forced to play Brayden Schenn or even Dalibor Dvorsky at center if there are better options, or matchups, for them on the wing.
The 2024-25 edition of this franchise will need several guys to play slightly above their grade, but who expected Perron to rebound with 23 goals and almost 50 points in 2019. We did not think three Blues defenders would have 10-plus goals, nor 15 skaters with 20-plus points.
Who saw guys like Ivan Barbashev or Oskar Sundqvist scoring 14 goals apiece? At the time, nobody. That's who.
The truth is nobody knows what guys like the Joseph brothers, Texier, Faksa, Holloway or Broberg will actually be. They could all be huge contributors in their own way or they might be busts.
I have the feeling they're going to meld with this team well and the Blues are going to make a run. Things will definitely be difficult given the star power some other teams added, like the Nashville Predators.
Even so, I fall back on the original point. Everyone was relatively pleased with those 2018 summer additions, but nobody saw what would actually happen. The 2024-25 Blues can definitely be a playoff team if the additions play well and one or two prospects turn into what we hope they can.
No offense, but even though they're not flashy, the moves Armstrong has made do not come off like the stop-gap moves of John Mozeliak. Adding someone like Steven Stamkos would be great, but the Blues added what they needed - defense and some toughness.
If everyone can find their comfort zone and do their jobs, we might all be surprised what this team does by the end of the season. When you have a playoff performer like Jordan Binnington, all you need is to get in.