The Blues made three bold moves in the 2024-25 season, and they all paid off.
The team made offer sheets to two Edmonton players, Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, utilizing a seldom-used system to inject young talents into its roster. Doug Armstrong fired coach Drew Bannister less than a year after hiring him, jumping at the chance to hire Jim Montgomery after he got fired by Boston. (Considering the plethora of NHL coaching vacancies this season, it’s unlikely Montgomery would still be available today had Armstrong waited.)
And he dealt for veteran Anaheim defenseman Cam Fowler, who solidified the team’s defensive core and perked up its power play.
“We had a decent year,” Armstrong said. “Not a great year. We had a decent year.”
Now they have to take the next step without such daring moves because, well, moves like that don’t come along that often.
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“You can sometimes go five years without having three large changes that affect your team,” said Armstrong. “You combine all three of those things, it’s exciting because all three of those things are going to be here at least for another year. … I think we’re in a spot now where we believe that we should be competing for playoff spots and hopefully moving up that to start Game 1 of next year’s playoffs at home.”
While the lasting memory of this team will likely forever be the team’s historic collapse in the final two minutes of regulation in Game 7 in Winnipeg, the reality of the season really is a breakthrough performance for the team. After two seasons of not making the playoffs, the Blues made it in 2025 — the regulation wins tiebreaker to the rescue — and are in good position going forward.
Even without many changes, the Blues could expect more points next season. Under Montgomery, the team got 77 points out of 60 games, or 1.28 points per game, compared to the .86 points per game it had under Bannister. If the Blues played the whole season at the rate it did under Montgomery, that would translate to 105 points, though the run under Montgomery included a club-record 12-game win streak that it is unlikely to emulate.
“Bringing in (Broberg and Holloway) made me believe that we were closer than other people thought,” Armstrong said, “because we believed they were going to be good. Bringing Jim Montgomery in gave us, like when we hired Ken Hitchcock, I said to the players, coaching is not an issue, not that it was an issue under Drew, but he was inexperienced, and he was learning. We brought an experienced coach in, and that was no longer going to be an excuse that the players or the manager or people knew more about coaching than Jim did. Jim knows more about coaching than I do, and he knows more about coaching than the players do. He knows the most about coaching of anyone in this organization.”
Both Armstrong and Montgomery are looking for a five percent improvement in the team, which would take the Blues over 100 points for the first time since 2021-22. But to do that, Armstrong acknowledged changes must be made.
“If we improve five percent point-wise, and think we’re going to bring back the same team and improve five percent again, that’s not realistic,” Armstrong said. “So we have to make changes. I think bringing (Jimmy) Snuggerud into our group is a positive change. I think if we could add another player that can provide 200-foot offense, that’s something that we can look at.”
Blues forward Jimmy Snuggerud, left, looks for a pass with pressure from Jets center Adam Lowry during the second period of Game 3 of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs on Thursday, April 24, 2025, at Enterprise Center.
Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch
“In this league, it’s hard to improve by five percent,” Montgomery said, “and that’s what we’re going to need to do again next year, and that’s going to be incumbent upon every player, coach and person in the organization, to try and get five percent better so we can get five percent better, if not more. How do we go about that? Well, I think we had a culture change which was significant. The investment by everybody after the 4 Nations was significantly improved from where we were. And now we got to go into this summer, and everybody’s got to have a great summer, and then we got to come here and have a really good camp.
“I think the playoffs is a growing opportunity for us. We have to learn to hold on to leads better. We have to learn to handle big moments where the pressure really gets raised, especially on the road and those are things that everybody got valuable experience with, and I think that’s going to be really important as we move forward as an organization.”
Not all free agents have to be splashy. The Blues added Ryan Suter and Radek Faksa — acquired from Dallas for the always-valuable future considerations — and both played a significant role in the team’s regular-season success.
“I think depth players from winning organizations mean a lot, and those two guys continue my belief that that’s the way to go when you’re going to go that direction,” Armstrong said. “And not every signing is sexy. It’s not going to be one that the fans ooh and all over, but again, if they make us half a percent better, and you get two of them, that’s one percent better. We’re 20 percent of the five we got to get to.”
But in most positions, the Blues seem set. Faksa and Suter are the only unrestricted free agents on the roster, and goaltender Joel Hofer is the only restricted free agent.
The Blues’ Zack Bolduc skates to the bench after scoring his second goal in the second period against the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at Enterprise Center.
Robert Cohen, Post-Dispatch
“How quickly do we move up and continue to expand and grow?” Armstrong said. “We could take a step backwards, but I don’t think we’re going to take a step backwards. And that’s not our goal. That’s not how I view the returning players as aging players that can’t play because we have young players, like a player like (Zack) Bolduc … but Boldy was able to play through mistakes this year as we grew. He doesn’t have that luxury anymore. That’s a one-year play-through-mistake thing that the coach gives you, but at some point now, you’re relied on to do things every night the right way all the time, and that’s just maturity. And that’s not a knock on Boldy whatsoever. It’s just the reality, when you mature and get better, there’s expectations, and the leash is shorter, and Snuggie’s probably going to have Boldy’s leash next year, a little bit longer, but that’s going to end soon, too. So I think we’re in a good spot.”
If there’s one way the Blues will be better next season, you can be pretty sure that the team’s work at 6 on 5, when the opponent pulls its goalie, will get a lot of attention. If there is something to come out of debacle finish in Winnipeg, it will be that.
“We will use it to grow,” Montgomery said. “I’ll make sure that we’re better in pulled-goalie situations. That’s my job. I’m going to make sure the plan is better. I’ll study the teams that were the best at it and see what they do that is similar to our D zone coverage so we can do it easily.”
The number of points the Blues lost there would put the Blues well on their way to that sought-after five percent improvement.
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