Better luck next year: The St. Louis Blues rediscovered their game

It took a lot of player and coaching movement, but they eventually got there.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs: The St. Louis Blues.

When the St. Louis Blues were at their peak throughout the mid-late 2010s, including their Stanley Cup winning season in 2018-19, they were defined by their smothering defensive play. They were probably the one championship team over the past few decades that didn’t have a true SUPERSTAR at the top of their lineup, and they won games by simply grinding teams down and sucking the life out of opposing offenses with players like Ryan O’Reilly and Alex Pietrangelo leading the way.

Every year the Blues ranked near the top of the league in pretty much every major defensive metric, and really did a fantastic job insulating their goalies.

They didn’t need somebody in net to steal games.

They didn’t need a game-breaking offense.

They just needed somebody in net to be average or maybe above average, and an offense that could churn out a few goals per game.

The defense took care of the rest.

But then father time and the salary cap started to catch up to them.

Pietrangelo left in free agency for Vegas. Vince Dunn was lost in the Seattle expansion draft. Players like Colton Parayko and O’Reilly started to slow down a little. A lot of their outside, big-money additions on defense did not pan out as hoped. The result was a team in the early 2020s that gradually started to lose its defensive dominance, and even worse, had started to shift toward the bottom of the league.

That resulted in mediocrity setting in.

During the 2024-25 season, however, the Blues got back to their defensive ways, and it took a lot of aggressive roster movement — and organizational movement — to get there.

The question now becomes whether or not they can build on it.

Let’s talk about it.