ST. LOUIS -- Not that it was a surprise, but it's come to this, and according to Blues general manager Doug Armstrong, the fate of the hockey club this season was sealed even before the five-game losing streak that preceded the All-Star break.
So even the modest three-game winning streak that came before Saturday's 4-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, trying to build on that for what the players felt like was one more push to try and convince management to not jettison off assets, was non-existent.
In trading Ryan O'Reilly and Noel Acciari to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday night for forwards Mikhail Abramov and Adam Gaudette, a 2023 first-round pick, a 2023 third-round pick and a 2024 second-round pick one week after trading forward Vladimir Tarasenko and defenseman Niko Mikkola to the New York Rangers, the white flag was raised.
"That's the reality of what we did to ourselves this year, including those guys that obviously all got traded," forward Brayden Schenn said. "We gave Doug a chance to go this route, which is on the players, is on us. When you've got pending UFA's and all that kind of stuff, that's just the nature of the business.
"We lost (four) good players already two weeks before the trade deadline. Who knows what else is coming."
What else is coming is a retool, not necessarily a rebuild. The reality has hit the players now, even though they were hoping for one last push. A push that could have proved to be futile anyway, since the Blues (26-26-3) are eight points out of a playoff spot.
"It’s tough that it’s a situation that we put ourselves in, left ourselves open to these decisions for management to make," defenseman Justin Faulk said. "And we have to live with it.
"It’s tough to see guys go. You never want to see that happen, especially guys that have meant so much to this team."
The biggest reason why the Blues are here, here after a 109-point season and perennial Western Conference powerhouse has been their inability to defend properly, and too many peaks and valleys throughout the season.
"This year we haven’t been able to find Ground Zero," Armstrong said. "Good teams don’t fluctuate the way we fluctuated. Win three, lose eight, win seven, lose five, win three. What that indicates to me is a team that doesn’t have a foundation, and something to fall back on quickly when things are going bad."
That's how the season started, they won three, then dropped eight in a row, and not just eight losses where there were overtime and/or shootout losses, eight straight losses with zero points. That was an instant no-no.
Then they won seven in a row, just unimaginable the peaks and valleys this group endured.
"Yeah, a lot of inconsistent play," Faulk said. "Nothing to fall back on kind of. There’s a lot of times you lose two, you kind of nip it in the bud, move on from there and put an end to it right away. We haven’t been able to do that this year.
"Like you said, a lot of swings. It’s our play that did it, myself obviously very much included. A lot of us older guys maybe didn’t carry the weight. We are where we are now, and this is what we have to deal with."
And just what are the Blues dealing with now?
As mentioned earlier, the word rebuild won't cut it around here. As was the case for Tarasenko, Armstrong was adiment about getting a first-round pick for O'Reilly, and he now has three in his arsenal of ever-growing picks in a deep draft to either use, package together to move up in the first round, or use them as part of hockey trades.
"Yes, the equity in the NHL now is to have these first-round picks. We now have three," Armstrong said. "I wish I had a crystal ball where I could tell everyone how this is going to work out. We could use all three of those picks to select players. And all three of those players would then get put into our development process and then our American [Hockey] League team and then be in the NHL at some point, and have long careers. Or, they might be gone before their name is ever called. I don’t know how it’s going to play itself out. One thing that I do know that we’re going to do is if we move picks – players – it’s not going be for one-year players. We need to retrench with players 25, 26 and under that have term on their contracts so they can grow with that next core of players we have."
Players like Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou, whose matching eight-year, $8.125 million AAV contracts kick in next season. And in the meantime, when it appears the Blues will just play out the string of their remaining 27 games, management will be watching to see how those players, and Jake Neighbours, Tyler Tucker, Nikita Alexandrov, guys that will get extensive looks, perform the rest of the way.
"We're not going to roll over and just fade away," Thomas said. "We've had a lot of injuries this year and we've found a way to win. That's been the Blues culture for a while, there's no give-up and you just keep on fighting. That's the way we're going to approach it. We like being the underdogs."
They'll be the underdogs quite a bit the rest of the way, but management will be watching their performances and mannerisms anyway to see how the young guys and the veterans all react."I used the wrong term in "quit." They're not going to quit. You don't get to the NHL by putting up a white flag so easily. I just want to see them respond in the right way and the right way to me is how we defend. Offense is God-given. Defense is a system and it's in your DNA. All players can defend, it's the desire to defend that separates them.
"This actually in a crazy way made my job easier and not harder. It would have been difficult sitting in front of you here today if we had five more wins, just 10 more points and telling you why it was a good idea to move Vladimir Tarasenko, why was it a good idea to move Ryan O'Reilly and Mikkola and Noel for draft picks on a team that was fighting for a playoff spot or in a playoff spot or fighting for a championship. This one was crystalized. We're two-thirds into the season, we're one game over .500."
And just when will Armstrong know when they can be championship-caliber again?
"I can answer that better probably August 15th, meaning I want to know what happens at the draft, I want to know what we are able to do with those picks," he said. "Do we use those picks for future players, do we trade those picks for current players? My experience is your team is pretty well set in early August. There's not a lot of big trades made then. I just need time to play itself out on what happens with these assets that we're gaining now for the future.
"What trading these players doesn't do though, it doesn't make [Jimmy] Snuggerud more mature today, it doesn't make [Zachary] Bolduc more mature today, it doesn't make them any more ready to come in. It doesn't take Jake Neighbours to a first-line left winger today that should be expected to score 30 goals. They're going to mature at their own rate. It's my job not to ruin their careers by putting them in positions to fail."
But it is Armstrong's job -- again -- to put this team back in position to succeed. It'll be up to him to determine how long that will take.