As the title implies, what’s the call, the move, the shot, possibly even the mistake to avoid?
What exactly is to be done when an incredibly talented roster, and that heavily talented roster falls, with all its weight, right on its face?! This is far and away the most frustrating season that has ever been endured by Blues fans in franchise history. Why? Well, as mentioned, the roster we’ve been given this year is, arguably, more talented than any Blues roster we’ve seen in over a decade. For whatever reason, the boys absolutely can’t get it together, and are almost assuredly going to miss the playoffs.
A head coach has been fired and replaced with Craig Berube, as an interim head coach. Usually the term interim implies temporary. Now to be fair to Craig, he could wind up to be a decent coach for this team. However, the city of St. Louis is quite over “decent”. We’ve seen decent for more than half a century with this team. There is a coach floating around out there that had a massive number of Blues fans salivating over. A coach that really knew how to use a player’s raw talent and transform that talent into great team play at the same time. Ladies and Gents, that kind of coach doesn’t come around very often. This team desperately needs a coach like that. The coach I speak of is Joel “the great” Quenneville. Side note for all the Coach Q haters: LOOK AT HIS PEDIGREE. There are rumors going around that Q is heading to Philly. Those rumors seem to be untrue, as Q has personally denied signing a contract with Philly. I’m not saying that Q is the hot item on the market right now, but Armstrong should really be blowing his phone up, which brings me to my next point.
Blaming the coaching as the sole reason is intellectually dishonest.
Doug Armstrong’s seat must be blazing, but hell, it’s probably already melted, with the fans at least. The patience that this ownership group has shown Army is incredible to say the least. Honestly, Army might have the longest leash in the history of General Managers, with maybe the exception of Mike Milbury being the General Manager AND head coach of the Isles from 95 to 97. Army’s transaction record is 50/50 good and bad, absolutely milk toast. A General Manager that is perfectly mediocre should not have this long of a tenure. That is the only sin of the ownership group. Tom Stillman and company are the best ownership group this team has had since Mike Shanahan. Why? They spend money on this team. I have no issues with them outside of giving Army too many second chances.
Can we really just blame the coaching and managing of this team? NO.
This roster houses some highly talented players that are not performing to standard. It is mind blowing how far out of form some players have been, even stretching into last season. I won’t name names, but if the glass skate fits, feel free to label the guy yourself. Goal tending can’t be fairly attacked this season because the defense has been astronomically bad, but Jake Allen is proven to be an extremely inconsistent net minder. There is only five guys on this team that have played at least 15 games, with a Corsi percentage higher than 50.0%. That means that there is only five guys on this team that spend more time funneling pucks towards the opposing goalie than time spent watching pucks go towards ours. That’s horrendous. Dang near this whole team is a dumpster fire of diamonds that somehow turned back into coal.
Big picture:
I think this team must be looked at as a whole. The core players are not getting it done on the ice, or in the locker room. The coaching can’t stick a message to them either. Hitch had a working message, veterans left for various reasons, and the youg’uns stopped listening; Hitch was fired. Yeo couldn’t get the team to play his system without the net looking like a coal bin; Yeo was fired. Berube hasn’t really had enough time with the team to do anything, so he gets a pass, for now. Meanwhile, Armstrong has overseen all of this. Do we really need to let him take charge of a fire sale? I don’t think so. The only answer that I see in this five-alarm dumpster fire is to let a new GM handle the complete overhaul of this team because the fans don’t need to watch another trade like Oshie’s, Stastny’s, or Shattenkirk’s go down.
At the very least a few blockbuster trades must be made to wake up the roster. If that fails, lose for Hughes (Jack Hughes).
