Inside look at St. Louis Blues

Returning to the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season for the first time in two years, the St. Louis Blues are tasked with remaining a playoff contender as they continue their retool.

And by improving by a five-percent increment, as they did last season with 96 points (44-30-8), the Blues feel staying among the top eight teams in the Western Conference is not only attainable again but also getting to the century mark in points is within reach.

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“One of the things I talked to our team about is an NHL team is like a tanker in the ocean,” said St. Louis president of hockey operations Doug Armstrong, who begins his final season as general manager before turning that role over to Alexander Steen next season. “When you want to turn things around, it takes a while, and when I say that, I mean you get better in this League in small percentages. We had 92 points (in 2023-24); this (past) year we had 96. I hate doing math in public, but that’s about five percent. I think if we do that again next year, that gets us close to 100 points and that’s where we want to go.

“I’m hoping that we have turned the tide on the re-whatever and we’re starting to become a competitive team that has expectations, honest expectations, reasonable expectations of success.”

The Blues surged down the stretch last season (20-4-3 in their final 27 games) to reach the playoffs as the second wild card from the Western Conference by besting the Calgary Flames on a tiebreaker with one more regulation win (32-31). So how do they get past the sting of a seven-game series loss to the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets in the Western Conference First Round? They had a 3-1 lead in Game 7 with just under two minutes remaining in regulation before allowing two goals in the final 1:56, including the game-tying goal with three seconds left, before falling 4-3 in the second overtime.

It will be a motivated group, one looking to remove the bad taste in which the season ended.

“That’s sports and sometimes you’re on the wrong side of it and that night we were,” St. Louis captain Brayden Schenn said. “… You’re never a playoff team until you are again next year, and that’s kind of the mentality that you have to have. It’s a tough League. Do we feel like we’re in a better spot now than we were (last season)? Absolutely. But at the same time, we have to learn from this (past) year just kind of how hard it is to make the playoffs, and we feel like we will get better.

“We’re going to learn from the experiences we had and you have to find ways to get better. When you do that and you kind of hold each other accountable throughout the summer, that’s how you get better as a team kind of throughout the year.”

The Blues didn’t hide from the fact they wanted to bolster their lineup at the center position and get younger on defense. They did just that by signing forward Pius Suter to a two-year, $8.25 million contract ($4.125 million average annual value) and forward Nick Bjugstad to a two-year, $3.5 million contract ($1.75 million AAV).

“We like our depth there,” Armstrong said. “[Suter] and Bjugstad certainly change our center ice complexion.”

St. Louis also acquired 22-year-old defenseman Logan Mailloux from the Montreal Canadiens but had to give up forward Zack Bolduc to do it, and in doing so, moved on from veteran Nick Leddy, who was placed on waivers and claimed by the San Jose Sharks. Also, veteran defenseman Ryan Suter was allowed to leave as a free agent.

Mailloux will complement a veteran group that includes Colton Parayko, Cam Fowler and Justin Faulk to go with younger defensemen in Philip Broberg, Tyler Tucker and Matthew Kessel.

“He’s an excellent skater, got an excellent shot,” Armstrong said of Mailloux. “We think he’s NHL-ready now. I talked to him, I told him he’ll have the opportunity … he has a job now. It’s his job to come into camp and keep it.

“With a trade like this, it’s an old-fashioned hockey trade. It was very difficult to include Bolduc in any deal, including this one.”

Suter, who had career highs in goals (25) and points (46) last season with the Vancouver Canucks, could slot in as a second- or third-line center and would complement St. Louis’ top six with Robert Thomas (81 points; 21 goals, 60 assists last season), Jordan Kyrou (70 points; 36 goals, 34 assists), Dylan Holloway (63 points; 26 goals, 37 assists), Pavel Buchnevich (57 points; 20 goals, 37 assists), Schenn (50 points; 18 goals, 32 assists) and Jake Neighbours (46 points; 22 goals, 24 assists).

Jimmy Snuggerud, who made his NHL debut after his final college season at the University of Minnesota, could also be an option for the top six as well. He collected four points (one goal, three assists) in seven regular-season games.

“When I look at our depth on the wing right now, if you go Snuggerud and Kyrou, then you go on the other side with Buchnevich and Holloway, it seemed like an area of strength of ours,” Armstrong said.

Blues coach Jim Montgomery will begin his first full season behind the bench after being hired Nov. 25, 2024, four days after being fired by the Boston Bruins. St. Louis went 35-18-7 after Montgomery was hired.

“I want to tweak some things, look at what some of the best teams are doing that we could maybe copy because it’s a copycat league,” Montgomery said. “There’s some areas of our game that need to get better and we’ll look at those; 5-on-6 is No. 1. And then I just think everybody coming back and having a training camp together and setting the tone of this is how hard we’re going to work.

“We’re going to come and have fun, too, because we get to play a game for a living, but when it’s your turn to go, whether it’s in training camp, it’s an exhibition game, we’ve got to go and I think that’s something that everybody has embraced.”