JULY 2019 STLMAG.COM (^) üĀ
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This was impossible. Not just because it was the
first time in 49 years that the Blues had last played
for Lord Stanley’s cup. Not just because in those
ensuing decades, we had redefined futility, making
a record 38 playoff appearances (including 25 in a
row) that all fizzled, often heart-wrenchingly, short
of reaching the final. But on January 3 of this year,
the team was dead last in the league—not worst
in the Central Division, but actually locked in the
basement of the entire National Hockey League.
Only four teams with as many losses through its
first 41 games had ever even made the playoffs, and
none of them had made it out of the first round. In
this city, the postseason heroics are the job of its
legendary baseball team. St. Louis miracles don’t
take place on ice.
That historical lack of hockey success has belied
the fact that St. Louis is, at its core, a great hockey
town. Of course, when check comes to shove, the Car-
dinals still hold sway in so-called Baseball Heaven.
But sweater-clad fans still pack the Enterprise Cen-
ter, with turnouts regularly in the top half of league
attendance. And from the moment the Blues showed
up as an expansion team, in 1967, the national sport
of the north has slowly seeped into our Midwestern
consciousness. These days, you’re as likely to see
kids playing in-line in the park or slapping pucks and
balls into nets on the neighborhood streets and cul-
de-sacs as playing catch. In 2016, five St. Louis–area
hockey players were picked up in the first round of
the NHL draft, and 14 of the 22 locals who have played
in the league skated this year. We may bleed red, but if
you look closely, our veins show blue.
With that birthright comes dis-
appointment. After all, the team
made the finals in each of its first
three seasons of existence—and was
promptly swept each time. Since the
1990s, despite a cavalcade of stars
that includes Hull, Fuhr, MacInnis,
Shanahan, and Pronger, the Blues
have statistically been the most disappointing
team in hockey, sixth most underperforming in all
of sports. And we watched each of those star play-
ers win championships elsewhere.
So we were unimpressed in November when, after
the miserable start, we fired our coach and pro-
moted Craig Berube, a career NHL enforcer with
less than two years of NHL head coaching experi-
ence. But in January, we started tapping our toes
to “Gloria,” a disco tune that players adopted as
their victory cry—despite the fact that it charted
before anyone in the locker room was born. We took
notice when Berube sat goalie Jake Allen in favor of
Jordan Binnington, a fourth-string rookie who had
more than 200 minor league games before winning
24 of his first 30 starts with a .933 save percentage.
Alex Pietrangelo and the blue line started playing
defense, and our offensive stars, Vladimir Tarasenko
and Ryan O’Reilly, started playing like stars. We
somehow made the playoffs for the seventh time
in eight years.
Then a funny thing happened as we waited for the
inevitable playoff exit: It never happened. We won on
the road and at home. Binnington didn’t wilt in the
net. The other stars kept shining, and we got unex-
pected contributions from the supporting cast, like
Jaden Schwartz, a disappointing prospect whose
postseason goals, including multiple hat tricks, were
more than he scored all season. And when left-winger
Patrick Maroon, a St. Louis native, netted the over-
time game-winner in Game 7 of the conference semis
against Dallas, we started to believe.
After our boys dispatched for-
mer playoff nemesis San Jose, the
unthinkable was reality. And as we
watched them skating in the Stanley
Cup Final for the first time in many
of our lifetimes, we were more than
just proud of our team and our city.
We were inspired—emboldened to
believe that anything was possible.
Blues players cele-
brate the team’s first
Stanley Cup Final win
following defense-
man Carl Gunnars-
son’s overtime goal
during Game 2
against the Bruins.
wang
(Wang)
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