Berube's job safe, accountability falls on players according to GM

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- Doug Armstrong isn't panicking -- yet, but the Blues general manager is putting out a warning signal.

Armstrong addressed the media on Tuesday following a hard and arduous practice at Centene Community Ice Center, a day after the Blues suffered their fifth straight loss, 5-1 at home against the Los Angeles Kings, a day after players and coach Craig Berube questioned the team's effort and showered with boo's from fans in attendance.

Armstrong didn't want to sound the fire alarm just yet but is flickering the light with the team 10 percent into its season and a meeting with the players prior to practice.

"I know we're only 10 percent into the season, which is a small sample size, but I thought that you've probably heard enough from the coach and the players, give them some time to reflect on where we're at and sort of answer any of your questions from a different viewpoint as a (general) manager. Obviously we're not in a spot where we'd like to be. We haven't been under Craig's tenure losing five in a row is something new to us and not something that we want to acquire a taste for. We had a meeting with the players today, more a ... not a fire and brimstone meeting, just a reality check."

In light of losing five in a row in regulation for the first time under Berube and for the first time since losing seven in a row (0-6-1) from March 22-April 5, 2021, Armstrong said the head coach's job is safe.

Berube signed a three-year contract Feb. 9, 2022.

"Well I told the players the coach is not going anywhere because the coach came from the American Hockey League where he coached young players and made them better and he coached veteran players and made them win here," Armstrong said. "So he can do both.

"I believe in the coach, I believe in the system. This isn't a system issue, it's a competitive issue. We have to rectify that, and I do say I do believe in the group. That's a very self-serving thing to say because I put the group together, and ultimately it's my responsibility to judge what they do."

Armstrong went through a litany of items with the team, including stats that show the Blues, who have been outscored 25-8 in their losing streak, are not very good at some of the top numbers prevalent to winning.

"We're in the bottom quartile of anything that matters in the NHL right now and that's the best we are, is in the bottom quartile," Armstrong said. "We're in the bottom 10 percent in quite a few areas too. You look goals-for, goals-against average, we're in the bottom. You look at goal differential, we're in the bottom. Our special teams are not special (11th on the power play, 23.8 percent and 20th on the penalty kill, 79 percent) and so we need to make sure this is ground zero and start making our way up, and what I said to the players, we may or may not win on Thursday (at home against the New York Islanders). Obviously we're in the winning business, but what we need to see is a competitive level higher than what we have now. What we have to is find a part of our game that we can build off of when things aren't going good. The NHL is a completely competitive industry and if you play teams that are, we'll call it a rebuilding mode or whatever, they're proud athletes, they're proud coaches. They don't buy into maybe what upper management wants is a rebuild because they're proud. If you give teams like that hope, they're going to take it and they're going to win those games. What we have to do now is put our stake in the ground that we want to get back and be in that competitive nature.

"When I look at the league in general right now, the teams that are rebuilding are moving quicker than the top teams are moving down so the league is going to be compressed. So what we have to do is we have to work our way back into the compression part of it. We're not in the compression part of it yet, meaning there's 25 teams right now in the NHL I think this morning that are .500 or better. That's another 25 percent stat that we're not one of them. So we have to find a way to get back into that."

By doing that, the Blues are going to need their best players, their top-end players, to pick up the slack, because the guys at the bottom of the ledger, their fourth-line guys, are actually making a difference and putting forth the effort necessary.

"If you had to pick a positive out of the first 10 percent of the season, I have been impressed with our fourth line," Armstrong said. "I think they come in, they give us energy. What I'm finding and what Craig is finding, what the players are finding is we don't have that ... when they put that good shift in, we don't follow it up with another good shift. We follow it up with sloppy play or turnovers or things that allow the other team to grab momentum. When you have a group of players that change the momentum, it's incumbent upon the next group to keep that momentum and we don't have that right now.

"It's 10 percent of the season, so I don't want to overreact, but we certainly can't underreact too."

So why is the compete level as low as it is? If this group of players is as close off the ice, why isn't that translating onto the ice?

"That's what we're trying to find out because it's the way we lose," Armstrong said. "We don't lose with pride, meaning we expose our goaltenders.

"If you look at our goaltenders the last three or four games, there has to be at least two-thirds or three-quarters of the goals are backdoor tap-ins. That's not on the goalie. The goalie has to face what he faces, so we're not competing at our net, we're not competing at their net. We seem extremely easily frustrated, and I think the competition build off our body language. When we don't score, we talk to the guys about ... we have a group of guys that believe, 'I can't believe this is happening to me,' and a group of guys that believe that they're not part of the problem when in reality, we're all part of the problem, starting with me. But we all are part of the solution too.

"Why we're not competing? I don't know. The guys tell me how close the group is off the ice and that's reassuring, but it has to be way closer on the ice. They have to want to play for each other. ... I wish I had your answer, I don't really have an answer why we're not competing. I just know we're not competing at a level that's necessary to be competitive."

Armstrong made a similar state of the union address after firing coach and friend Ken Hitchcock in the middle of the 2016-17 season and promoting Mike Yeo, calling the players "independent contractors" who are only playing for themselves. Armstrong said this isn't the same.

"To me, this is completely different," he said. "This just feels like it's an organization malaise that we're in, or an organizational thing that I'm responsible to find a way out of. I don't think it's one or two players.

"I would say the difference from anything in the past is I really believe there's guys doing more than necessary to try and get out of it, not less than needed to try and get out of it. But playing hard dumb is just playing dumb. Like, he's a fast skater, but he's always in the wrong spot, so you're just the fastest guy to the wrong spot. Right now we need to up our competitive level, and we need to up our hockey sense. The game of hockey now is ebbs and flows, and when you get the momentum, you want to push for as long as you can, and when you don't have it, you want to get it back as quick as you can, and right now we don't keep it long enough and we don't get it back nearly quick enough."

The Blues can't continue down this path of futility, or else the climb back up will be arduous should they slip even more. And there's only so many 2019's in their arsenal, and that particular path isn't one that's ideal, even though that one ended with them standing on top of the mountain.

If they keep falling, it could indice change, at some point.

"I don't think there's a number. I think it's a feeling," Armstrong said. "I think it's a feeling that you have that it's not an analytically driven decision. It's things you see with your eyes. If you don't see the compete level. You guys have been around long enough. You've followed a team that's been relatively stable for a lot of years, but you've seen us play a lot of unstable teams. When we become unstable long enough, I think everybody is going to know."