The St. Louis Blues might have been using one of their most prized possessions all wrong. In his Olympic debut, against a very strong Finnish team, Dalibor Dvorsky just put Slovakia ahead of the pack with a dominating performance.

With a goal and an assist for two points, he was an x-factor against Finland and might have catapulted himself into superstardom after just one game. But, looking at it from another angle, the Blues might have been using him all wrong in the first stint of the 2025-26 regular season.

Surround him with talent

Dvorsky saw third-line minutes and had some power-play minutes, much like he did with the Blues this season. The only difference being that instead of having two underwhelming linemates like Brayden Schenn and Pavel Buchnevich at his side, he had two linemates with Slovakia who are a lot more efficient on the offensive side. Both Adam Liska and Libor Hudacek, although they are not NHLers, nor have they ever been, are used to a professional game on international ice. They are used to playing in these tournament-style settings and are efficient at it by scoring more goals than not.

Let’s put it this way: those two former KHLers made a 20-year-old rookie in the NHL look like an established veteran on the ice against one of the higher-ranked teams going into the Olympics.

Looking at how the Blues can learn from this

The Blues can take what they saw with Dvorsky after one game of action and make at least one minor adjustment. Continue to give him top-six minutes for the rest of the season, but start surrounding him with a solid goal-scorer like Jordan Kyrou, and keep him with Jimmy Snuggerud. That trio, amazingly, has not been used this season, according to Moneypuck.com.

If Dvorsky can keep up with this solid first rendition of his Olympics debut and use these next two games for Slovakia as learning experiences to bring back to the Blues, the Blues can then implement him more into the grand scheme of things. There is no telling what is going to happen to the team once the regular season returns, but one thing is for certain: Dvorsky has to be a critical part of the next generation for the Blues.

This kid is going to be special, but the Blues have to just use him the right way.