The St. Louis Blues disastrous season has hit rock bottom

In a season that held such promise for the St. Louis Blues, it’s done nothing but crash and burn, and it may have just hit rock bottom in practice on Monday.

This was meant to be THE year for the St. Louis Blues after a disappointing season the year before. This offseason was focused purely on filling every hole the Blues had in their lineup, and that’s exactly what they did. They made a blockbuster trade for Ryan O’Reilly to get the true first line center they desperately needed. They signed David Perron, Tyler Bozak, and Patrick Maroon to shore up their depth scoring, so surely after missing the playoffs by one point the years before this would be enough to get them back.

Unfortunately so far, to call this season a disaster so far for the Blues would be polite. St. Louis face planted into the mud right out of the gate this season, and continues to sink further and further with each passing week. First it was they couldn’t get a save from Jake Allen or Chad Johnson, then they couldn’t score, and then it was both. Head coach Mike Yeo got canned as a result on Nov. 20 but things haven’t gotten any better since then, going 3-5-1 since Craig Berube took over.

Rock bottom seemingly came for the Blues after a humiliating 6-1 blowout loss to the Vancouver Canucks on home ice on Sunday night, signifying that the Blues had lost 10 of their last 14. Post game was where the issues with this team was revealed.

These comments should be disturbing for any Blues fan. It takes a serious bottoming out for a team to straight up to the media that they just aren’t bought in to winning, and that they’re really just a mentally fragile team. Leadership is seemingly askew, and everybody seems disinterested.

Unfortunately, a blowout loss to Vancouver was not yet rock bottom for the Blues, that would come a day later in practice when frustrations for Robert Bortuzzo and Zach Sanford boiled over, leading to a nothing held back brawl between the two teammates. This was a little more than just blowing off steam after bad loss, since Bortuzzo cracked Sanford with three right hands before Sanford even had his gloves off to defend himself, and Sanford chucking his stick in frustration at Bortuzzo after being separated before heading to the locker room.

The Blues did their best to downplay the incident, and spin it as a positive development to show that these guys do actually care about winning.

“That happens. Guys are frustrated and they should be. So sometimes in practice it boils over and things happen,” interim coach Craig Berube told reporters after practice.. “That’s what happens because they do care and they want to be successful and they want to win.”

“Mentally, I think guys are at a point right now where they’re so frustrated with how things have gone,” Blues defenseman Chris Butler said. “It’s a fragile group and it’s hard to go out there and just play and have fun and enjoy the game when things aren’t going your way.

“How do you get back to that point? I’m not sure, but it’s something that we’re going to continue to stress is that mental toughness.” Butler continued. “You have to show up every single day, every single shift and find a way to contribute in a positive way.”

In a year that was meant to be all in for the Stanley Cup, the Blues might have to consider at least a cleansing of the locker room to get some semblance of stabilization to get back on track. At 10-14-4, the Blues are just one point out of last place in the NHL with 24 points. They did trade their first round pick for Ryan O’Reilly in the offseason, but if they finish 21st or lower, they have the option to keep it and send Buffalo next years instead.

The locker room is seemingly at each other’s throats, and with it spilling out into practice might just be the beginning unless something changes. Whether that’s stripping the whole thing down, trading away the culprits of this broken locker room, or just getting a decent goalie that can sustain a save percentage above .900. The Blues waived Chad Johnson on Monday the 6-1 blowout to Vancouver, but if they can just pry a league average goalie out of anywhere in the league, that might just fix everything, because having Jake Allen consistently not give them a chance has been brutal.

But no matter how bad things get for the Blues this season, at least they’ll always have their new service puppy in training, Barclay.

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