ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Blues have fired coach Craig Berube following a 6-4 loss against the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday.
Berube, who signed a three-year extension on Feb. 9, 2022, had one more year remaining on his contract.
"Obviously I'd like to thank Craig. He and I started working together in 2016," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said Wednesday. "... Helped right a ship and take it to a championship. We built a friendship over the years and it's difficult to have that talk with him last night. He's a true professional. We talked a little bit, we had a beer, we reminisced for a second and now my job is to move forward and Craig will now regroup and he'll land on his feet. He's too good a coach not to be in this league. I feel personally responsible for the situation that we're in and I also hope that the people that I just talked to personally feel responsible too. If they don't, that's their decision. It's not a great day, but it's a new day, and now we move forward."
Drew Bannister, who was the coach of the Springfield Thunderbirds of the American Hockey League, has been named the interim coach and will remain in that role, and Daniel Tkaczuk assumes the temporary role of coach of the Thunderbirds.
Armstrong said the search for a new coach will begin immediately with no set date when to announce one.
"Drew Bannister will come in on an interim basis and serve as head coach starting with tomorrow's game," Armstrong said. "We'll start the process in looking for a permanent replacement. There's no timeline on that and there will be no updates on that as I'm going through it. We'll announce it when we announce it. We went through this five or six years ago. Good play will dictate a lot of things. Bad play will dictate a lot of things at a player level and all levels of an organization."
The Blues are mired in a four-game losing streak (13-14-1) that followed a subpar season last year in which they went 37-38-7, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2017-18.
They have losses against the Columbus Blue Jackets (5-2) and Chicago Blackhawks (3-1) in this stretch that seemed to break the camel's back.
"I would say that I haven't really slept much since the Columbus game," Armstrong said. "Then the Chicago game was a sleepless night and then you hope Detroit would be different, but your mind is starting to work when you're everybody's homecoming game. It's not a good feeling and the last three games, I shared it with the leadership group that when you get up and you read the clippings the next day and the players from the opposition, the coaches are (saying), 'What a character win. What a gutsy win. I can't believe we did that last night. We're undermanned, we played the night before against a rested team.' If they feel that way about their performance, how would we feel about our performance? I personally didn't feel well about our performance.
"You try and extend someone and you have as much respect for in Craig as much latitude and rope as possible, but last night's game against a depleted Detroit team that was tired, looked a lot like a depleted Columbus team that was tired and a depleted Chicago team, and there just wasn't a feeling that there was something that was going to change today that if we just came in and went back to work that would make tomorrow different. I don't know if tomorrow's going to be different. I just know one of the things has been removed from the equation that we can focus on was the head coach and now, when you make that change, we're getting now to the center of the hour glass. That's myself and that's the players."
Bannister traveled to St. Louis on Wednesday and serve his first game behind the bench on Thursday when the Blues host the Ottawa Senators in the second of a three-game homestand.
Berube will go down in Blues coaching lore as the only coach to bring a Stanley Cup to St. Louis in his first season, when he was hired on Nov. 18, 2018 when he replaced Mike Yeo.
The Blues went from worst to first, claiming their first title when they defeated the Boston Bruins in seven games.
Berube went 206-131-44 in parts of six seasons, only trailing Joel Quenneville (307) and Ken Hitchcock (248) in franchise victories; he was 24-27 in four trips to the playoffs.
Bannister, 49, has spent the past three seasons with Springfield, leading the team to a 93-58-19 regular-season record. The Belleville, Ontario, native has also guided the Thunderbirds to consecutive playoff appearances, including 2021-22, when they won the Eastern Conference and reached the Calder Cup Final.
Bannister began his coaching career in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), where he spent three seasons as an assistant with Owen Sound and three as head coach with the Soo Greyhounds. He also served as head coach of the AHL’s San Antonio Rampage and as an associate coach with the Utica Comets.
As a player, Bannister’s career spanned over 20 years and included 164 NHL regular-season games between the Tampa Bay Lightning, Edmonton Oilers, Anaheim Mighty Ducks, and New York Rangers.
Bannister will become the fifth coach under Armstrong, who took over as GM in June 2010, joining Davis Payne, who replaced Andy Murray Jan. 2, 2010 before Armstrong took over but was fired in 2012 for Ken Hitchcock, who was fired Feb. 1, 2017 and replaced by Mike Yeo; he was fired after a 2-0 loss against the Los Angeles Kings on Nov. 19, 2018 and replaced by Berube.
Armstrong also announced that former Tampa Bay Lightning, Dallas Stars, New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks alum Brad Richards, who played with the Stars while Armstrong was the GM there, will come on board as a consultant but do so from a distance, mainly to support a struggling power play that is 31st in the NHL at 8.4 percent (7-for-83).
