Blues Off-season and 2024-25 Season

[Popeye_Card]

Not a single Brett Hull. Or Pronger, or MacInnis.

Young bucks.

[CardsofSTL]

Not a single Brett Hull. Or Pronger, or MacInnis.

Young bucks.

I noticed no Pronger. There was one Hull and one Gretzky which I thought was odd. It was cool when the Blues had him but I wouldn't have identified the Blue note with the Great One.

[Popeye_Card]

I must have missed the Hull one.

[CardsofSTL]

I must have missed the Hull one.

Right after several Thomas and O'Reilly picks someone slid a Hull in there. I am too ignorant to know the names of all the hockey players that are making their choices by their faces.

[cardsfantx]

As expected, bannister fired and Monty hired

This is a 5 year deal (bannisters was just a 2 year; this and next)

[JCShutout]

Wow, that was quick! (Monty)

DA don’t f around

[JCShutout]

We played a decent game again. But MN is just a really strong team. Tough games against Carolina and Minnesota back to back. Played pretty well against both of them. Had lots of opportunities. But they were just clearly better at the end of the game.

We are really lacking that scoring touch. We need finishers. Guys that can find the back of the net 40+ times a year. I don't think Kyrou, Buchnevich or Neighbors will ever be that Kaprisov/Necas type dynamic player. Will Dvorsky? Snuggerud? We'd better hope so.

Sort the league leaders by points, and our top player on the list is Kyrou. Want to guess what number he's at on the list?

[SHOW]

Tied with 12 players for 41st in the league.

Yikes.

Iirc we had similar middling numbers in 19 and in many competitive years. Because of the cap and the nature of hockey, I truly think one can win with good depth. I think the big key is we need another top line center. Then you would have a really solid pair for each of the top lines, and we are swimming in solid middle six guys to round out the rest of the top9.

Guys like schenn and saad and neighbors should be staples on the third line/last guy on a scoring line. We should have at least 4-5 guys ahead of them. Instead we have 3. (Though, respect to schenn who was a solid scoring line player for many years, and saad who was an underrated supplementary scoring piece. And I do think neighbors can be an effective middle six player)

Oh and the d is a mess.

Move some vets as ntcs ease up. Keep cycling in kids. I do think they could be a good team again in 2-3 years once some contracts have expired, but they will need to spend wisely, and find two of the hardest things to find, a top pair d man, and a scoring line center. They could probably buy one of those on the fa market eventually, but they probably need to develop/trade for the other.

[CardsofSTL]

Bannister didn't last long

[GeddyWrox]

Bannister didn't last long

Indeed.

He was always going to be a shorter term coach, but Montgomery was always their top choice. It was just crazy luck that he came available when he did. I feel bad for Bannister, but this shows the Blues mean business about being good in a few years.

[st.lewis11]

I've seen many complaints on Armstrong the past few years, but I'd always liked his style. He always does ballsy stuff.