NHL/MLB markets where hockey and baseball share special links
By Al Daniel
Shared NHL and MLB market: St. Louis
Between 1988 and 1994, and now again since 2016, it has only been the Blues and the Cardinals for the Gateway City.
St. Louis was a four-team town for one year, with the Blues’ debut coinciding the NBA St. Louis Hawks’ swan song in 1967-68. Football continued through another flock of Cardinals until that franchise transferred to Phoenix. Then the aforementioned Rams provided a professional pigskin fix from the mid-’90s to the mid-’10s.
Of the locale’s bygone teams, the NFL Cardinals logged the longest St. Louis tenure with 28 seasons. The Rams stayed for 21 before moving back to Southern California, and the Hawks were around for 13 winters.
Conversely, the Blues — who came as part of the NHL’s first modern expansion class, replaced the short-lived and long forgotten St. Louis Eagles (1934-35), and launched amidst a Cardinals World Series run — have stuck for 53 uninterrupted years.
Their baseball brethren has been in place since before the Stanley Cup existed. Fittingly, when the Blues clinched their first Cup on the road in 2019, Busch Stadium capitalized on a Cardinals road trip by filling up for a viewing party.
Two years earlier, the city’s two tried-and-true teams amplified their bond at a critical time for the local sports scene. Two months after the Rams confirmed their departure, the Blues were awarded the 2017 Winter Classic, to be held in the Cardinals nest.
That hockey game in a baseball venue coincided with Week 17 of St. Louis’ first season on the NFL sideline in 22 years. The most noted attendee was actor Jon Hamm, an outspoken fanatic of the city’s only two tried-and-true teams.