The Saint Louis Blues were dead last in the NHL on January first. Dead last. Worse than the Ottawa Senators. The godless, lost Ottawa Senators were better than the current Stanley Cup Champions at one point this year.
Imagine being a Blues fan this year. Completely abandoning your team by mid-December and suddenly being swept back in during a mid-February run for the ages. The Blues made the playoffs as the three spot, yes the three spot, in the central division. This team didn’t just barely squeak into the playoffs, they utterly dominated the second half.
It’s hard to know how to react to this Blues team other than to simply say it’s the best story hockey has seen since the lockout year Blackhawks. That team set a record of 17 consecutive games with points in a row to start the season. They also ended up beating the Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals in game 6 scoring two goals in the final minute to shock the B’s and win the cup. You can’t call the Blues a luck story. They were the most skilled roster in the second half.
Simply put perhaps the biggest difference for the Blues was new coach Craig Berube and rookie goalie Jordan Binnington. Binnington reminds me of another great NHL story of the past few years. Matt Murray, though Binnington was more impressive. Murray held the ship for the Penguins throughout the playoffs. Binnington meanwhile, literally raised the Titanic. A ship lost at the bottom of the ocean needed a savior to raise it and the Blues net minder was that savior. In the regular season Binnington put up awesome numbers, Vezina Trophy numbers, a 1.89 goals against average and five shut outs.
With a solid goalie behind them the Blues had no problems with fire power throughout the season. Vladamir Tarasenko, Ryan O’Riely, and Brayden Schenn were all 50+ point scorers. Plus home town hero Pat Maroon who showed up massively in the playoffs providing much needed depth for the Blue notes.
So the NHL season has come to a close. The Blues are Stanley Cup Champions. The greatest sports story of the year thus far. Perhaps the greatest story in hockey of the past half-decade. Looking ahead the Blues will most likely keep their coach and install Binnington as the full time keeper. Rarely do you see continued success in the NHL. That’s why I love the sport, it’s an entirely year to year league. So whose to say if the Blues will be as good next year. Who knows if they’ll even make it back to the playoffs, all that aside though this is an amazing story! When have we ever seen this before? When have we seen a team go from the bottom of a league at the halfway point to being champions? I would argue the NHL is the only league this could ever happen in. The NBA is to top heavy, the NFL season isn’t long enough. Perhaps in the MLB. However the season is to long and varied for that amount of success. You rarely see anything outside of a 15-20 game winning streak. 35 games though, that’s the perfect amount of time, the amount of the second half of the NHL season. Will we ever see this again? Maybe, there is a blueprint now.