By Nicholas Rego, The Hockey News Intern
This season’s version of the St. Louis Blues is feeling similar to the 2018-19 Blues – and we all know how that ended. That Blues team was languishing in last place in the Western Conference in early January, needing to leapfrog six teams to make the playoffs, and fans in St. Louis were feeling blue about the team’s chances.
Then came a 25-year-old goalie with only one NHL appearance to his credit – and that was three years earlier, in the 2015-16 season. Jordan Binnington was thrown into action to gain NHL experience in a season where the playoffs seemed almost impossible. What happened next shocked the entire NHL world as the Blues pulled off a complete 180 on their season.
In Binnington’s first start on Jan. 7, 2019, against the Philadelphia Flyers, he recorded a 25-save shutout in a 3-0 victory. That one start led to an unbelievable rookie season for the netminder. He finished the 2018-19 campaign with a 24-5-1 record, a 1.89 goals-against average, a .927 save percentage and five shutouts. Binnington’s play, along with Ryan O’Reilly’s 77 points in his first season in St. Louis, propelled the Blues to a third-place finish in the Central Division – a position that no one saw coming given how the Blues’ first half of the season had unfolded.
From there, St. Louis rode their second-half momentum all the way to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup. The Blues defeated the Winnipeg Jets in a very close first-round matchup. All four of St. Louis’ wins in that series came in one-goal games. Then the Blues came back from a 3-2 series deficit to defeat the Dallas Stars, including a Game 7 double-overtime winner by Patrick Maroon that sent the Blues to the Western Conference final. There, they defeated the San Jose Sharks in six games and were on their way to their fourth-ever Stanley Cup final appearance, looking for their first-ever Cup win.
The Cup final against the Boston Bruins was a back-and-forth series, needing a Game 7 to decide the winner. The Blues were blown out by the Bruins in Game 6, losing 5-1 in front of their home fans. But after a 32-save performance and a 4-1 win in Game 7, the Blues completed the ultimate comeback on the back of perhaps Binnington’s best game of his career.
This season, St. Louis is on a similar trajectory to the 2018-19 team. Through the first quarter of the 2024-25 NHL campaign, the Blues sat 13th in the West. Something needed to happen if the Blues wanted to revive their season and get back on the right path towards a playoff spot.
Luckily for them, a head coach with a lot of regular-season success in recent years fell into their laps. On Nov. 19, the Bruins – the Blues’ opponent in the 2019 Cup final – fired coach Jim Montgomery, who was two seasons removed from achieving the NHL all-time regular-season win record with 65 victories in 2022-23. Five days after Montgomery was fired, Blues GM Doug Armstrong signed him to a five-year contract, replacing Drew Bannister as the Blues’ bench boss. With Montgomery at the helm, the Blues have been able to climb the standings and now occupy the second wild-card spot in the West.
Another big reason for the Blues’ rise has been the performance of the now 31-year-old Binnington. Entering the 4 Nations Face-Off, a lot of fans were concerned about Binnington being Team Canada’s goalie because of his play prior to the tournament and the fact that Logan Thompson, who was performing extremely well with the Washington Capitals, was left off the roster. It’s pretty safe to say that Binnington’s performance in the tournament, especially in the final against Team USA, silenced any critics who were concerned about Canada’s goaltending.
Since the 4 Nations, Binnington has been extremely hot in net for the Blues and is keeping the team’s hopes alive to finish in a wild-card spot. St. Louis enters the final stretch of the regular season in the thick of the playoff race and will need players like Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas and Binnington to carry them into the post-season, as they search for their second Stanley Cup in franchise history.
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