F*ck Your Team: Why I Hate the 2025-2026 St. Louis Blues | NHL Season Preview

F*ck Your Team: Why I Hate the 2025-2026 St. Louis Blues | NHL Season Preview

The St. Louis Blues eager to bounce back from a truly horrendous end to their season last year. Enter the 202526 season with some optimism and a lot of pieces in place that they feel confident in. But with a lot of stiff competition in the West, the question on everybody’s mind is whether the St. Louis Blues will be able to recapture the magic that got them on a playoff run last year or if they just missed out on their best chance by a mere 3 seconds. Forget me for you should forget it. You’re living in the past, man. St. Louis Blues entered the 2024-25 season with a lot of questions after a pretty disappointing 2023 24 campaign that saw them miss the playoffs. They entered the season not with a coach who had gotten them their first Stanley Cup, Craig Barubi, but his replacement, Drew Bannister. And surprise surprise, Banister didn’t last the entire season either. After a slow start to the season, he was fired and replaced by another castoff from the Boston Bruins, Jim Montgomery. It was looking early on in the season that this would be another down year for the St. Blues Blues who would be forced to retool and potentially enter into a rebuild. But then something funny happened. The Beloo started to play really well. They went on a little hot streak. Jordan Bennington locked in at the Four Nations tournament. Jordan Kyu picked up his play after a disappointing start to the season. Rob Thomas emerged as a legitimate number one center. Their two offers sheetated players from the Edmonton Oilers in Broberg and Holloway looked like absolute steals for the cost that they got them for. And the St. Louis Blues managed to pull off a magical run to get back into the playoffs. Very reminiscent of their 2019 campaign that saw them win a Stanley Cup. While they certainly didn’t have high expectations facing the President’s Trophy Winnipeg Jets, some poor play by Connor Hellbuck early in the series gave Blues fans some cause for hope. And St. Louis DJs and St. Louis DJs were dusting off those Gloria vinyls for one more ride. When the Jets battled back and pushed it to a game seven, Blues fans were honestly happy. They were playing with house money. A loss would be disappointing, but this wasn’t like seasons past where the Blues would rip their fans hearts out. This guy passes across the Oh, look at him choke. Look at him suffer. Two hours later. Shoots two. They score. Game over. Series. You blew it, boy. You really blew it. Dear God, you expected nothing and you were still let down. Only the Blues could do this. Don’t turn your back on me. Let’s get one thing straight. This is shooters tour. I’ve worked hard my whole life, paid my dues, and now it’s shooters turn. The Blues enter the 20242 season with largely the same group that got them to the playoffs last year. Starting up top with Pablo Buchanan, a name that makes New York Rangers fans quake in anger. He just recently resigned with the Blues for six years at $8 million per, which is a pretty good rate for a guy who can’t score in the playoffs unless he’s against Connor Hella while he’s [ __ ] down his pant leg. His center will be Robert Thomas, who, as I said, is now a legit number one center in the NHL and one of the better ones in my opinion. He can put up all the points he wants, but he’s still not going to be the first person to come up when you Google his name, unfortunately. The other wing on that line is projected to be Jimmy Snuggler, the young forward that the St. Lose Blues are placing a lot of their hopes and dreams onto. I’m sure this going to go well. On an unrelated note, Blues fans are waiting for the day that Jordan Kyu will finally be able to eclipse 80 points in a season. He’s producing at a level that’s I guess acceptable for his contract, but some Blues fans were really all over him for only producing 65 points a year instead of his usual 70. His center on the second line is Braden Shen, the team captain and a guy that fans of other teams absolutely despise. So in their jealousy, they’ve tried and denigrate him and beat him down by pointing out things like the fact that he only scored 60 points for the first time in his career last year. Rounding out the second line, their big acquisition from last offseason upfront Dylan Holloway, who proved that the just over $2 million that Edmonton didn’t want to pay him would have been money well spent. He put up 60 points and 25 goals last year for just a pittance in St. Louis. Poor McDavid and Dryidle. Without him, they were only able to make it back to the Stanley Cup finals. Imagine what they could have done with him. On the third line, you got Jake Neighbors returning, who is still incredibly young, but becoming a very productive member of the Blues, putting up 46 points last year, but he’s part of a reformed third line that includes Pio Sudter and Nick Buchad. The fourth line for St. Louis is not your typical group of bruisers. It’s some guys who actually have a little bit of skill as well as keep the defensive zone clean. You have guys like Alexe Torchenko, Oscar Sunquist, and the Aussie Nathan Walker, as well as guys like Matthew Joseph and Alex Texier in the press box. As far as prospects go, the St. Louis Blues are pretty loaded up front. In addition to graduating Snuggerand, they have guys like Justin Carbono and Dalabir Dborski waiting in the juniors this year. All we hear is about their defense. They can’t stop a nose bleed. The back end of the St. Louis Blues is largely reformed, but there are still a few stalwarts of the old years back there. Namely, Colton Parano, who’s their number one defenseman right now. From my mind, he’s kind of one of those in between number one, number two guys. I think he serves well as a number one defenseman, but if you had a legit number one to go with him, he would be an elite number two guy. He’s going to be paired with Cam Fowler, who they acquired from the Anaheim Ducks last year and what seemed like a dump off by Anaheim. But Fowler surprisingly found his form in St. Louis and turned into a very productive player for them. And if St. Louis is lucky, he’ll be that again this year. The other big RFA they poached from the Oilers last year, Philip Broberg, was like Holloway, very good for St. Louis in his first year with the team. He’ll be paired with Justin Faulk, who was signed as a big ticket free agent a while ago and has been on the decline a little bit for the last few years. Now, the third pairing is all about youth. Tyler Tucker is looking to get his first legitimate look in the NHL this year. He’s played parts of the last three years in St. Louis, and he’ll be paired with Logan Mayu, who they got in a swap with Montreal, trading away Zack Buluke and getting Mayu. And I think Buluk is probably the better player in that trade, but considering the lack of depth that the St. Louis Blues have on defense, particularly in their prospect pool. I understand the logic behind this move. And speaking of prospects, they really don’t have anybody who’s knocking on the door. They got guys in the system like the Linstein and Adam Gurichek, but I don’t think either of those guys are playing for the Blues this year. Wait, it’s not Goldberg. Disgusting. [Music] In goal, it’s the trash bin himself. Jordan Bennington returns for the Blues as our number one goalie once again. And Ben is a guy who when he locks in is almost unbeatable. Consistency has always been an issue and the mental game has also been a big issue for him. I would say he’s one of the 15 to 12 best goalies in the NHL. If he could lock in that consistency, he could be like top eight or top 10. But as it stands right now, you do need a good backup behind him. And the Blues have that in Joel Hoffer. He’s a guy who can step in at 25 years old and has been able to play a good chunk of games over the last few years. And he’s a guy that potentially if Bennington falls off could be groomed as a future starter for them. You ain’t gonna be able to hit them. They’re too good and you suck something up. Yes, sir. I sure do. The St. Louis Blues definitely got better when they fired Banister last year and replaced him with Jim Montgomery. Monty is a guy who has always been able to take elite talent and get them to perform at the highest level in the regular season. The problem is when he gets to the playoffs, and last year was no exception. His team’s inability to hold on to a lead late and take advantage of a terrible goalending performance by Connor Hllabuk is one of the main reasons that they lost in the first round to a team that they should have on paper had no chance to beat. Now, you could say that good coaching is evident by the fact that they were able to hang with the President’s Trophy winning Jets. But the fact that promising seasons turning into early playoff exits are becoming something of a pattern for Monty both in Boston and Dallas indicates to me that this could be just a simple matter of the fact that St. Louis ran into a cold goalender and couldn’t manage to finish the job whereas other better coach teams probably could. Since you’re new here, uh, I’m going to cut you a break. The off season was all about refining the details for the St. Louis Blues. Tory Krug obviously retired due to an ankle injury that’s been nagging him the past few years which sucks for their cap situation. To augment that loss, they brought in Logan Mayu in that trade for Bulldog. Like I said, they also signed Pia Sudter and Nick Bug’s dad to sh up the third line, which is a place where they had a little bit of trouble last year, adding him for some depth where they were having to play guys like Brandon Sod, Bulduk, Matthew Joseph, and Radic Foxa last year. And then in the draft, the Blues added a very skilled forward prospect, a position of need for them in Justin Carbono. He’s a prospect I really like and he already showed some of those flashes in his first preseason game. Pretty good. Pretty damn good, lads. I am really excited to see what Jimmy Snuggaround is going to bring to the St. Louis Blues because in the brief flashes that we saw from him last year, he looked very good. He had a goal in four points in seven games, which means he is technically eligible for the Calder Trophy this year. And he’s a guy who has accomplished a lot at the collegiate level. I’ll be very interested to see just how well he’s able to translate that skill set to the NHL over a longer sample size. I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be gray. And it’s going to last you for the rest of your life. I see this season for the St. Louis Blues going very similar to last season. They’re going to be a team that is chippy and hard to play against in the regular season. They’ll struggle to get into the playoffs, but I think they’ll have a chance at the end of the day. I am a bit concerned that they’re playing in a central division that is incredibly loaded. You’ve got teams like Dallas, Winnipeg, obviously, who are going to be the top dogs, but also Colorado, Utah’s going to be improved, and the Minnesota Wild are always dangerous. I do think that this division will produce two wildard games, and St. Louis could very well be one of them. I’m just not 100% sure it’ll be Ben. If I was betting, I would say St. Louis is the team that’s the odd man out. And if they do get in, I don’t see them getting further than the first round. Again, Jim Montgomery as their head coach, he just hasn’t proven that he can be a guy that’s successful in the playoffs, taking good teams on deep runs, let alone teams that have a lot of flaws. Have fun [ __ ] [Music]

Can the Blues recover from that BRUTAL series loss to the Jets?

Follow me on other socials

Twitter: https://x.com/R1nkR4t
TikTok: @the.rink.rat

Business Inquiries: the.r1nkr4t@gmail.com

#nhl #hockey #2024nhl