Doug Armstrong made one thing very clear during the Blues’ season-ending news conference Thursday afternoon:
The Blues are sticking to their plan.
“This was Year 1 of something that’s not going to be finished after Year 1,” said Armstrong, the Blues’ general manager. “We can look to be prudent in the free-agent market. We need internal growth. We need some of our veteran players to play a little bit better, some of our young players to grow a little bit. The coach has to get a little bit better. The manager has to get a little bit better. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel. There is a plan in place, and I’m willing to stick through that plan.”
This season, the Blues missed the postseason for the second straight year, a 92-point campaign that missed the playoffs by six points. On the heels of their first losing season in 15 years, the Blues missed the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time since 2009-11.
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By missing the playoffs, this season can’t realistically be deemed a success, particularly with a middle-of-the-road No. 16 pick likely to come their way at the draft this summer. Progress? That might be more appropriate.
The Blues climbed 11 points in the standings. They witnessed a breakout season for Robert Thomas. They got glimpses of Jake Neighbours’ and Joel Hofer’s potential. They developed younger prospects in lower leagues. And they moved a year closer to escaping the logjam of hefty, lengthy contracts on the books.
This path was the one the Blues chose, to live on the playoff bubble in exchange for remaining competitive and hopefully shortening the timeline to return being a regular contender in the NHL. It’s the one Armstrong laid out at the end of last season, at the beginning of this one and reiterated following a 43-33-6 record this season.
So even with the mediocre result this year, it’s far from an unexpected one.
The Blues’ performance and salary-cap situation puts them far away from making big moves to instantly transform the team into a Cup contender. The past two years have shown that. But what about the other way? What about bottoming out in order to select at the top of the draft and accumulate elite young talent?
“I want to say this politely: I’m not sure our fan base and I’m not sure I could handle that,” Armstrong said. “Take 15 more losses off of this season and do that for five more years. I’m not really sure we want to have a point total in the 50s and the 60s for four or five more consecutive years to build something that might be good in 2035. We’re trying to do something that’s difficult, which is stay competitive and find good players and make good trades and win a championship.”
Armstrong threw out successful examples such as Pittsburgh and Chicago and noted that “there’s pain that goes into those things.”
The Penguins bottomed out to land Ryan Whitney (2002, No. 5 pick), Marc-Andre Fleury (2003, No. 1), Evgeni Malkin (2004, No. 2) and Sidney Crosby (2005, No. 1) and could be reaching the end of the road from that run two decades and three Cups later.
The Blackhawks had a top 10 pick from 2004-07 but needed Jonathan Toews (2006, No. 3) and Patrick Kane (2007, No. 1) for the foundation of their three Cup-winning teams. Of course, Chicago is back in the same boat again, having selected Connor Bedard last year and will draft highly again this season.
In recent times, Colorado has built a juggernaut behind Nathan MacKinnon (2013, No. 1) and Cale Makar (2017, No. 4), and even lost the lottery in 2017 when it was 21 points worse than the next-closest team. Tampa Bay’s run was set up when it selected Steven Stamkos (2008, No. 1) and Victor Hedman (2009, No. 2).
Both of the payoffs for Colorado and Tampa Bay came about a decade after each finished toward the bottom of the standings.
Of course, failures also exist. Buffalo has missed the playoffs 13 consecutive seasons. Detroit has missed in eight consecutive years. Arizona (or soon, Utah) has missed in 11 of the past 12 postseasons. It’s seven in a row for Ottawa. The Devils haven’t qualified in consecutive seasons since 2010.
“I’m not in the position to think that that’s the direction the Ƶ Blues should go in,” Armstrong said. “Obviously, I make recommendations or a game plan, and I filter that upstairs (to owner Tom Stillman). I do show them the three different categories. One is to move our first-round picks, to move our top prospects to get into a market and get a player. Or the other one is to move anyone with any value, or high value, and replace them with American League players.
“If you took our top four players, I’ll let you pick whoever they are, if you took our top four players and traded them and you got young assets and futures and you replaced them with American Hockey League players, or less, we can get to 50 points. I can get us there, trust there. It’s getting us out of that after that’s the hard part. But I just don’t think that’s where we need to go.”
On the other end, when asked whether the Blues would be a salary-cap team next year, Armstrong said, “It’s not a goal not to be, and it’s not a goal to be.”
“If there’s a player or a situation that I can take to Mr. Stillman and he signs off on and adds a player with X amount of millions of dollars that takes us to the cap, I’ll do it,” Armstrong said. “But I’ll get no benefit of spending money poorly so I can say next year, ‘Look, we’re at the cap. We’re trying.’ Trying stupid isn’t trying. That’s just being stupid. The owners have never said, ‘No, you can’t spend.’ My job is to provide a road map where it’s spending wisely.”
Without an aggressive teardown or an optimistic build, the Blues remain committed to their retooling, with hope to improve via prospects or potentially in trades.
“We’re going to stay with the path we’re on,” Armstrong said.