Here's why the Blues are in prime position to chase ghosts of postseasons past
ST. LOUIS -- After clinching the Central Division title Thursday, the St. Louis Blues remain uncertain about which opponent they'll face in the first round of the playoffs next week. They know they'll get a wild-card team, but which club sinks (or rises) to the occasion is still unclear.
What's more clear is how they've changed themselves.
The team has been stung repeatedly by early postseason exits, the most recent courtesy of Chicago in 2014. The series was competitive, but by the end it was obvious the Blues needed a few key tweaks if they wanted a longer playoff run the following season. And so they got to work. Now, as the regular season closes, here are three ways the Blues have indicated they're better poised for postseason success than they were a year ago:
TEAM DEPTH
In September, defenseman Barret Jackman, when asked if there was anything that made him feel the upcoming season would be different for the Blues, answered without hesitation.
"Last year, I was pretty impressed with our depth, but I think we've even gotten deeper," said Jackman, who's been with the Blues for over a decade. "Last year, I thought we had four solid lines and six D-men that could play. And now, I think we have nine D-men that are NHL ready and capable. We're gonna have tough decisions by the coaches on what our forward lines are. The other teams are going to have trouble matching up. I just think that the overall depth we have is amazing, and I don't think anyone around the league can match it."
With trades and call-ups, the Blues' roster has changed even since Jackman made those comments, but the season has proven his point. They were deep enough that they could afford to put one of the biggest free agents last summer, Paul Stastny, on the third line for part of the season. They increased their depth further at the highly coveted center position with Jori Lehtera, whose chemistry with Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz created one of the most dynamic lines in the NHL last fall. Their fourth-line center, Marcel Goc, played so well after being acquired from Pittsburgh halfway through the season that he began eating away at Lehtera's minutes. Adding Zbynek Michalek, a shot-blocking machine, to the club at the trade deadline forced an already solid defensive core to work even harder for ice time. And, as late as March, they were continually required to sit people who didn't deserve to miss ice time because of their play, such as when defenseman Petteri Lindbohm sat out against the Wild or Robert Bortuzzo against Columbus and Vancouver. Hitchcock calls it the "competitive cauldron" of a hockey club.
"It's probably not comfortable for the person that has to step aside," he says. "But that's the competitive cauldron that works in a hockey club, and so you have to get ready when it's your turn. And when somebody jumps ahead of you, then you've got to keep working and stay with it because it's gonna turn and you're going to be needed."
Not only has team depth forced the Blues to stay sharp if they want regular starts, it's also helped them stay competitive league-wide as they deal with the inevitable injuries a club suffers through an 82-game marathon. In the last several games of the regular season, the Blues went 4-1 and managed to snatch the Central Division title without their two highest point-scorers in the lineup.
It all bodes well for a deeper run in the postseason.
GOALTENDING
Brian Elliott and Jake Allen have each stepped up big for the Blues this season.
St. Louis has reversed its approach to goaltending since the 2014 postseason in two key ways. Last year, the Note went big and bold and brought in Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller, who'd won a silver medal and an MVP award at the 2010 Winter Olympics. This year, they relied on options closer to home: Brian Elliott, who's been with the organization for four years, and Jake Allen, a promising young goaltender the club drafted in 2008.
In sticking with familiar faces this postseason, the Blues stand on a promising trend. Six of the 10 Stanley Cup champions since the 2006 lockout have won with goaltenders drafted by the organization: Cam Ward (2006), Marc Andre Fleury (2009), Corey Crawford (2013) and Jonathan Quick (2012, 2014) all won with the team that drafted them, and so did Chris Osgood (2008), even though he spent a few seasons playing elsewhere between being drafted by Detroit and winning a championship there. Tim Thomas (2011) and Jean Sebastien Giguere (2007), though they weren't drafted by Boston and Anaheim respectively, spent over half a decade with the franchises before helping win the Stanley Cup.
The second key goalie change the Blues made was bringing in a new coach. They replaced Corey Hirsch, who'd been with the organization four years, with Jim Corsi, who'd worked with Dominik Hasek and Miller in Buffalo.
"I think he has an educational calmness about him that helps the goalies," Hitchcock said. "He's always looking at things from a long-term perspective. He does not get wrapped up in the day-to-day performance of the goaltender. He has set goals for each guy on a monthly basis, and he never loses sight of those goals, and he keeps them focused in that area."
And Corsi has the background to know exactly where things will end up.
"He's had so much experience with top goalies, with Hasek, with Ryan Miller, guys like that -- he knows how their development took place, so he's got that ability, in the coaching fraternity, to look around corners," Hitchcock said. "So he knows kind of on a year projection where a guy's gonna get to if he works on certain things, and that's what he's able to do. He has a schedule that he adheres to with each guy, and they follow it."
And, according to Hitchcock, Elliott and Allen are on target for where Corsi expected they'd be this time of year.
"I think he feels like both guys, a month ago, were ahead of their curve, where their development was, but I think they're on curve now," Hitchcock said. "He knew what things they had to work on and what needed to get better to become elite goalies, but he looks at that from a long-term perspective where we would like it to change tomorrow. But he sees it as, if we keep working in this direction, this is where we're gonna end up, and he's got a lot of confidence, because he's done it with other guys who are top guys."
THE SNIPER
Vladimir Tarasenko has six game-winning goals for the Note this season.
It would be unfair to say the Blues couldn't score last year, considering they had five players with 20 or more goals during the regular season.
They just couldn't score when they needed to -- in the playoffs.
Except for Tarasenko.
Last postseason, he gave flashes of what he might become -- on an absolutely atrocious Blues' power play (it had a 6.9 percent success rate in the playoffs), he was the only player to score, and he scored twice. This season, he has 71 points, including six game-winning goals, second on the club behind Stastny's seven. He's proven himself an elite scorer in the NHL, with the kind of skill and finesse that can go toe-to-toe with stellar goaltending and get that one-timer which might be the difference between playing hockey in June and playing golf. He's sat out the past several games with an injury, but should he return to the lineup for the first round (he's skated with the club this week), the Blues are in an excellent position to go deep.
You can follow Elisabeth Meinecke on Twitter at @lismeinecke or email her at ecmeinecke@gmail.com.