Resurgent Blues, Can they make it?

At one point early in the 2006/2007 NHL season, it looked as if once again that the St. Louis Blues would endure another long year. Kicking off the season with a horrid 7-17-4 record that would be good enough for last place in the Western Conference. The poor on-ice performance resulted in devastating attendance figures. On some nights, less than 10,000 people would show up at the Scottrade Center. November 30th, a measly crowd of 5,410 witnessed another Blues' loss to the Nashville Predators.

There was no end in sight until current head coach Mike Kitchen was given his walking papers. Replacing him would be former L.A. Kings head coach, Andy Murray.

When I first heard the news, the first question that popped in my mind was, Why? At that point, the Blues season was well more than 1/4 over, the decision to bring in a new coach just didn't make any sense. There we no high expectations for this club in the beginning of the season and tossing Mike Kitchen to the curb seemed a bit rubbish. Did this organization really believe Andy could turn this club around and compete for a playoff spot? I sure as hell didn't.

Don't get me wrong, Andy Murray is a great coach, but the Blues were 15th in the Western Conference. To believe the Blues can climb up and beat teams like Detroit, Dallas, Nashville, heck, all of the teams, wasn't imaginable. How he proved me wrong..

Since taking over, the Blues lost four in a row but quickly recovered and went an astounding 8-2-1. The Blues are now 13-6-4 and have moved on up to 11th in the West. St. Louis, with 48 points, is tied with Phoenix, 4 points behind the Oilers, 6 points behind Colorado, and 10 points behind of a playoff spot. That's outstanding considering where this club once was.

So, the question? Can the resurgent Blues make the playoffs? Let's put this in perspective.

The Blues have 31 games left. 16 games left on the road, the Blues away record is 10-10-5. 15 home games remaining, the Blues home record is 10-13-3. With 48 points, let's say the Blues need 96 points to take 8th. Which means, they need another 48 points to get there. Meaning, they need to win 24 out of 31 games. Realistically, it doesn't look good.

Look away Blues fans, the opponents your team will be facing are not easy ones...

Detroit: 3 (1 home, 2 away)
Nashville: 2 (1 home, 1 away)
Dallas: 3 (2 home, 1 away)
Van/Edm/Cgy: 6 (1 home each, 1 away each)
Minnesota: 3(1 home, 2 away)


No easy task. Looking at their schedule, I will have to say the St. Louis Blues will not make the playoffs. But, whatever comes out of this season will be a positive for this club. Blues fans will definitely have something to look forward to next season (pending how the off-season goes). You never know though, maybe the Blues will surprise us all and squeeze in to the playoffs. They'll need a few teams to drop in order for them to do so. Who knows..maybe 92 points will do it, possibly 90.

Kudos to the Blues and their organization for doing a fantastic job and turning this rebuilding team in to a possible contender. You've managed to turn heads around the league and continue to play spoilers against some very tough teams. Job well done. Now only if we could get some more people to watch those Blues!

But to think...maybe if they hired Murray 10-15 games earlier...we could've very well of seen this team in the 2006/2007 playoffs.

--

I was originally going to do a St. Louis Blues blog/Conroy back in Calgary but chose to just do one. Hopefully you enjoyed this one, and keep doing what you do on Top Shelf. Represent your team!

Cheers,
Bruceki

This and That...

First off, I'm Bruceki from Top Shelf. I guess you already knew that since the people reading this will be from Top Shelf. Don't get ahead of yourself Bryce..

Bryce is the name and I'm new to this whole blogging ordeal. Blogs seem to be sweeping the nation so I thought I would join in on the fun.

The blogs I write will be hockey blogs, I'll try to stay away from posting Flames blogs seeing that I want to discuss hockey and not concentrate on only one team. Hopefully I'll get some subscribers..if you can even subscribe (I guess I'll find out later)...I just hope a few tune in that is all.

Like I mentioned before, I am apart of Top Shelf. See once again, I think I'm talking to people that don't know that. There are a few others who write blogs and I strongly advise you to go check there's out if you haven't already. OilersAddict83 and Stealth I know already have their blogging sites. I will post the link to their blogs at the end of this one in case you want to see what's happening over there. Ryan (Stealth) recently posted an audio blog, it was really fun to listen to, even though he discusses the All Star Game that is over already, I suggest you still listen in if you already haven't. I'll try to see if I can subscribe to them..if I can.

Now on to hockey, I'll try to keep it light seeing as it is my first blog. It's also 3:00 in the morning and I don't want to get too carried away.

The All-Star activities were fun as always to watch. I certainly thought that the Skills Competition would be far more exciting then the All-Star game..it happened to be the other way around. I was a bit disappointed in the skills competition, maybe the coverage wasn't all that great, I don't know, I just thought it would be more exciting. I don't like to complain on small issues but when they had problems with the clock in the "Fastest Skater" activity, I hate to say it, but it killed the mood for me. Having someone use a stop-watch to record the time was a downer, I didn't like that at all. What can I say? It bugged me.

The Young Stars game. I know its just for fun but I would of liked to see more intensity in that game. It was pretty boring and I hate to say that but I wouldn't complain if I had to miss the 2nd half of it. Once again, I expected more out of it..

What I didn't expect much out of is the All-Star game. First off, the jersey's looked fine. The moaning and groaning seems to have died down after everyone seen the jerseys. I thought they looked better then expected. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking about buying one. If I had to pick something wrong with the uniforms, it would be the gloves. Didn't like the color pattern they had on it.


Secondly, the West shocked everyone and won 12-9. No, that isn't a typo, it was actually 12-9. Gary Bettman will be sleeping happily tonight. Everyone thought the East would take it, myself included, and the West ended up taking it. It was an awesome game to watch, I enjoyed it and it was nice to see 21 goals. Kudos to CBC for doing a spectacular job, I liked how they talked to Roberto Luongo when he was in his crease before the game started. Job well done. Perhaps you'd get my full kudos if you wouldn't delay the Young Star Game/Skills competition next year.
Last thing about the All-Star stuff. People who say "All-Star game is pointless, I'm not watching it, I rather watch whatever" Take some happy pills and calm down. Nobody is asking you to watch it. Pointless? I guess you can say that but who cares? They're having fun, I certainly think its fun to watch. You don't see the stars of the NHL on a team very often unless there playing international hockey or in the Olympics. Just enjoy it.

This blog is longer then I expected to be so I know most of you have probably clicked the "x" or have fallen asleep. I was going to touch base on the second half of the NHL season, I think I'm going to, nah, what the hell, let's talk about it.

I'm excited for the NHL to return back for it's second half. Probably because I'm a Flames fan and that Northwest Division is just so damn exciting. Someone has to pull away in that division because it's starting to kill me. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.

I will definitely keep my eyes on the Anaheim Ducks in the second half. How the mighty have fallen, you can blame the injuries for that. I think there is no question that this team will still be hard to beat when Pronger returns to the line-up, heck I still think there a force to be reckoned with even without Pronger. They did advance to the Western Conference finals last season, and that was without Chris. I just hope the Flames don't face them again in the post-season (if they make it of course), we all know what happened last season.

The Sabres have slowed down a bit but will still finish first in the Eastern Conference in my books.

Teams I'll be paying close attention to in the second half are: The Northwest divison teams, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Jose, Montreal, Pittsburgh..heck all of them. It's been such a fascinating season so far. It will be quite the finish.

Thanks for tuning in and reading my first blog. If you read it all and haven't yawned, I'm impressed. Hopefully you guys tune in for more and I'll try to keep this baby updated when I can. Happy posting on Top Shelf, all of you are great. Once again, congratulations to the February Top Shelf award winners. Everyone has done a fantastic job, keep it up, and keep representing your team. Of course, none of this would be possible without Chris (Staze). A big shutout to the administrators (Staze, Stealth, AngryPirate) who run the place and basically work there butt off everyday and of course to the moderators (Spinner Spencer, coco9, Bikerpoet, OilersAddict83, Shoooot!) who make me look good.

Feedback is appreciated greatly, I don't know if you can respond or what..I'm such a newb at this. Or "noob". See, I am a noob. Anyways, let me know, you could always private message me on Top Shelf. I love to hear everyone's opinions and such. You don't have to sign up to comment, I switched the settings, I'm probably asking for hate mail doing that but all is good.

Cheers,
Bruceki

P.S.: The links to Brandon (OilerAddict83) and Ryan's (Stealth) blogs site.

Stealth: http://stealthoiler.blogspot.com/

OilerAddict83: http://sportsbyoa83.blogspot.com/

Check them out!


Cheers,
Bruceki