ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - St. Louis Blues hockey is back on the horizon now, with the NHL season officially underway.
The Blues season won't begin until Thursday when they play the Dallas Stars, but there are plenty of stories and questions heading into the season that will ultimately decide if the Blues can return to the playoffs again or will they have to unfathomably start a rebuild?
A NEW ERA BEGINS FOR THE BLUES
USA Today
Remember the days when David Backes, Alex Pietrangelo and Ryan O'Reilly were all captains of the St. Louis Blues? It already feels like a long time ago.
Now it's Brayden Schenn's turn to be the captain of the Blues. You be hard pressed to find any Blues fan who felt Schenn wasn't a worthy candidate for the vacancy left open after O'Reilly's trade to the Toronto Maple Leafs at last year's trade deadline.
Schenn will no doubt will be a key heading to the season and how much can he lead the team back to the playoffs when it faced a bit of roster turnover over the past few years and had a pretty quiet offseason this summer.
Vladimir Tarasenko and O'Reilly, of course, moved on in deals at the trade deadline and both signed with other teams in the offseason.
The Blues, expectedly, didn't add a whole lot this offseason, only acquiring forward Kevin Hayes in effectively a salary dump deal with the Philadelphia Flyers and reuniting with bottom-six forwards Oskar Sundqvist and Mackenzie MacEachern on low cost deals.
How much Brayden Schenn can lead this team back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs will a key to the season.
DEFENSE IMPROVEMENTS WILL BE THE BIGGEST KEY TO THE SEASON
USA Today
The Blues' defense was a big talking point last season, for all the wrong reasons. The team's defensive inefficiencies might've by far been the biggest killer of their season last year. The Blues defense allowing 298 goals last season was the most they allowed since the early 1980s(316 in 1983-84).
Understandably, there some changes to that front. the Blues shuffled their coaching staff, parting ways with Craig MacTavish and Mike Van Ryn and replacing them with Mike Weber, who will work with the defenseman, and Michael Babock, the latter being the son of Stanley Cup winning head coach Mike Babock. Babock will serve as a skills coach.
From the player's perspective, there were really no changes, with a tight cap being a big reason for that.
Of course there will be two players will have a close eye on the most for a rebound season in Colten Parayko and Torey Krug.
GOALTENDING WILL BE ALSO A KEY TO REBOUND
USA Today
While the Blues defensive corps will be a big key to see how much the Blues rebound, the goaltending improvements of Jordan Binnington will also be a key to watch too. It was still a disappointing season for Binnington, who posted a high 3.31 GAA with a .894 save percentage and a -19.2 Goals Save Above Average(GSAA) last season.
You certainly can't blame Binnington as the sole reason for the team allowing nearly 300 goals last season, but regardless improvements from him will also be a key. Can he rebound like he did back in the 2021-22 playoffs?
YOUNG GUNS IMPROVEMENTS WILL HELP THE BLUES IN A LONG WAY
USA Today
While the Blues didn't add a whole lot of players during the offseason, there will some bit of pressure on the team's younger players to help contribute.
Defenseman Tyler Tucker, goaltender Joel Hofer, and forward Nikita Alexandrov will begin the season in the NHL. All three players have been longtime mainstays in the Blues development pipeline and all three players got a taste of the NHL last year to the end season.
Of course, Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas will be under a bit more a watchful eye this season, with both beginning the first year of identical eight-year, $65 million contracts.
Both players on paper looked like they had good seasons, with Kyrou scoring 37 goals and 73 points in 79 games and Thomas scoring 18 goals and 65 points in 73 games. However, it was still a bit of dropoff compared to their 2021-22 seasons and it never felt like they reached sixth or seventh gear and were stuck on the second and third a lot.
Both player's play got criticized by Blues Head Coach Craig Berube last season, who infamously questioned their work ethics and play last season.
Improvements from them will help the Blues go a long way and prove to the Blues staff that they are in fact the next faces of the franchise.
BLUES 2023-24 PREDICTION
USA Today
Much of the national media had the Blues in the tier of slightly missing the playoffs to being one of the last teams to be in the playoffs with a points total of anywhere between 88-94 points this season. Of course, as plenty of Blues fans know from the experiences of 2021-22, preseason predictions don't really mean much.
However, the likely scenario is very much the Blues are not Stanley Cup contenders, and probably fringe playoff team at best right now due to the lack of additions on the roster, especially on defense, and the amount of roster turnover from last season.
It tough to make a case that they are better than the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars. Honestly, you still can make the case the Minnesota Wild, Winnipeg Jets and Nashville Predators might be better than Blues too.
This season will very much be a test to see if they are still good enough to make the playoffs this year and prepare for a run in 2024-25, when the cap might go up to $88 million next offseason, or is time for the Blues to start a rebuild.
