Steen, Armstrong relationship wasn't always great, grew into a strong one over time

ST. LOUIS -- Where Doug Armstrong and Alexander Steen were able to solidify their relationship on an even more positive scale on Thursday wasn't always the case.

Especially earlier in the player's NHL career.

Sure, it's not uncommon for a general manager and player agree to disagree, or simply disagree without being friendly about it, and tough conversations would ensue as a result, but in the end, those were probably some of the common factors and traits in which Armstrong trusted Steen enough to be ready to take his seat as GM in the end when the Blues announced their shifting of hockey operations in the next couple years with Armstrong relinquishing his role as GM for Steen to become the 12th GM in Blues history in 2026.

"It started as a player," Armstrong said. "There's certain guys you gravitate to and ask questions about your team and about what they're doing. As players get older, they do reflect more differently on what they want out of the game. So I've always had a lot of respect for 'Steener.' We've had some hard conversations. He's given hard feedback to me too. It always just wasn't one way."

Those hard conversations eventually have led to the relationship the two have had since Steen retired following the 2020 season. And those conversations were beneficial.

"I find they usually do because if you skirt around the hard issues, you never really get to the core of what you believe in or what they believe in," Armstrong said. "It's not always enjoyable, and usually you don't see the benefit maybe as you're having that conversation, but it's a lot of times it's a call a couple hours later saying, 'OK, can we meet again. I'd like to dig a little deeper into that.' It doesn't happen with everybody. There's just certain people that just gravitate to that and they usually end up in management.

"I'm so fortunate. I worked with Bob Gainey and Bob Clarke, maybe the two greatest captains of franchises and leaders of singular franchises and 'Steener' has a lot of that in him. He started in Toronto, but he's a Blue. There's no question. I'm not sure he takes the job with 31 other franchises."

They've kept in touch until Steen was ready to take on a different role in his hockey life that led to him being brought in as the European player development consultant to the role he now has as the special assistant to the GM for the next two years until ready to take over as GM.

"When I started working with him last year, the questions that he'd ask, the passion he had, it just started to as my mind started to wonder what was best for the team, it's sort of like a coach, you start out with a lot of candidates and I just kept coming back to him, coming back to him," Armstrong said of Steen. "When I brought it up to Mr. [Tom] Stillman, he said, 'He doesn't have any experience.' If you take someone you truly believe in, the experience will come. Let's not lose the right person for the wrong reason. So being able to have him for the next two years work with me, work with Ryan Miller and all those other guys is going to set him up. We're not going to throw him into the deep end in two years. We're going to be here to support him, but I just think he has all of the qualities that you need. He has a lot of Bob Gainey in him: measure twice, cut once and always do what's best for the franchise. When you start with that, it's a good start."

Stillman, rightfully so, had some pushback. The chairman wanted to know if this was the right thing to do.

It's like any discussion," Stillman said. "It was, 'Well, what about this, what about that?' We're both pushing each other. And this is over a long process for a long time.

"The way we've worked this out is we're not losing the best general manager in the business. He's still going to be here to guide Alex, teach him how to do the job and oversee the job of president of hockey operations is really broad and it covers a lot. In fact, he's the person that will be grooming and developing our new GM. To me, it seemed like this is the best of both worlds."

Perhaps the defining moment between player and coach came late in the 2016-17 season when the Blues, close in the playoff chase but not close enough for Armstrong to feel like adding to the roster at the trade deadline, traded away one of Steen's closest friends, Paul Stastny, to the Winnipeg Jets. Steen was none too pleased, as a number of Blues veterans weren't, including Brayden Schenn, while the team was in Minnesota playing the Wild. But a Starbucks conversation between Steen and Armstrong led to some trust gained for the long haul.

Steen told Armstrong he wanted to win, and although he may not have requested out of St. Louis at the time, it was basically his way of saying he wanted to win and if not here, then perhaps elsewhere would be best if the Blues were going to be in the business of trading players for picks.

"I said, 'Give me a little bit of time, I'll prove to you that we want to win,'" Armstrong said. "We wound up trading for Schenn, [Ryan] O'Reilly," and added Tyler Bozak, David Perron and Pat Maroon through free agency.

"When you do that, you never know how it's going to end, and it ended with a championship," Armstrong said.

Steen, 40, ascended to the top quickly and will one day get to run the show.

"This last year, I've had the opportunity to work under Tim Taylor, with the development staff," Steen said. "Tim's been great for me, has helped me a lot. Ryan Miller the same, always around, supportive. Peter Chiarelli, Scott Mellanby, Al MacInnis, everybody's been so welcoming.

"For me to go into this, to be able to work side by side with someone that I've had a relationship with for over 15 years now, someone that pushed me as much as [Armstrong] did when I was playing, to know how he's going to push me in this part. I have so much admiration for what he's done for, not just this city and this team, but for myself. I'm looking forward to get going here."