The St. Louis Blues failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the third time in the past four seasons.<\/p>\n
The Blues (34-33-12) won 5-3 at the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday but were eliminated earlier in the day with the Los Angeles Kings\u2019 1-0 victory against the Edmonton Oilers.<\/p>\n
St. Louis qualified for the playoffs last season, losing to the Winnipeg Jets in seven games in the Western Conference First Round. It won its only Stanley Cup championship in 2019.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a look at what happened in the 2025-26 season for the Blues, and why things could be better next season.<\/p>\n
The skinny<\/p>\n
Potential unrestricted free agents: Oskar Sundqvist<\/a>, F; Justin Holl<\/a>, D<\/p>\n Potential restricted free agents: Dylan Holloway<\/a>, F; Jonatan Berggren<\/a>, F; Matthew Kessel<\/a>, D<\/p>\n Potential 2026 Draft picks: 12<\/p>\n What went wrong<\/p>\n Struggles early in the year: The Blues were experiencing tough times when the calendar changed to 2026; from Dec. 29-Feb. 4, they went 5-12-1. On Feb. 6, when the NHL began its break for the 2026 Winter Olympics, St. Louis trailed the Anaheim Ducks by 14 points for the second wild card in the West. As valiant as its effort was to get back into the postseason race, it proved to be too much to overcome.<\/p>\n Scoring issues: The Blues are averaging 2.68 goals per game, which ranks 28th in the League this season. Robert Thomas<\/a> leads them with 58 points (22 goals, 36 assists), Holloway is next with 46 points (20 goals, 26 assists) and Pavel Buchnevich<\/a>\u00a0is third with 45 points (17 goals, 28 assists). It didn\u2019t help Thomas was out from Jan. 10, had a minor procedure on his leg in early February and didn\u2019t return until March 1. Holloway missed time, too, and has been limited to 56 games this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n Woes on special teams: Neither the power play nor penalty kill has been a source of strength for St. Louis; it is converting on 17.8 percent of its power plays and has a 76.4 percent success rate on the penalty kill. Each is ranked 26th in the NHL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St. Louis Blues failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the third time in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5120],"tags":[71,5,4,534,84,5285,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-551251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-blues","8":"tag-blues","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-st-louis-blues","13":"tag-stlouis","14":"tag-stlouisblues"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116392761972112758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}