The St. Louis Blues need to basically win out, and the Vegas Golden Knights or the Los Angeles Kings need to lose out if they have any hope of making the playoffs this season. That probably won’t happen, and it will be the second season in a row that the Blues will be watching the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs from their homes.
So what hurt the Blues this season, and why aren’t they most likely not heading to the playoffs? You can point to quite a few reasons, but the primary one is that this team was never able to get consistent, even after Drew Bannister took over for Craig Berube.
While Bannister has been an improvement over Berube, the Blues still didn’t win enough throughout what could be his short tenure as the team’s head coach. Had St. Louis managed to make things more interesting following Bannister’s promotion to interim head coach, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, but instead gearing up for what will be an exciting postseason.
Numerous issues sank the St. Louis Blues 2023-24 season
This isn’t to say Bannister did a poor job in Gateway City, as he’s managed a 28-18-4 record, which equals 60 points and 1.2 points per game, adjusted for between 98 and 99 points throughout an 82-game span. Since the Western Conference has been beyond competitive this season, there is no guarantee that number would have catapulted the Blues into the postseason, but they could have been making things very interesting in the wild card race.
Unfortunately, that most likely isn’t happening, but it could have if the Blues didn’t suffer three major setbacks, some of which haunted them all season. Let’s explore those three setbacks, discuss what happened, and why they will ultimately keep St. Louis from making the 16-team playoff field in 2024.
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