ST. LOUIS -- A few days after the fact for Brayden Schenn, it still stung.
And it probably won't go away any time soon for the St. Louis Blues captain in light of how they blew a 3-1 lead late in the third period last Sunday, ultimately losing 4-3 in double overtime to the Winnipeg Jets in Game 7 of the Western Conference First Round.
But the forward, along with goalie Jordan Binnington were named to Canada's roster for the 2025 IIHF World Championship that starts on Friday, can take a step back and be proud of another step this Blues team took under his leadership guide wearing the 'C'.
For a player that wears the team concept on his sleeve and plays for the logo on his chest and did so for all 82 games of the regular season for the third straight year and sixth time in his career, finishing with 50 points (18 goals, 32 assists) before adding two goals and an assist in the playoffs complementing his game with a physical brand of style.
Schenn was asked about the loss Sunday, the future for the Blues looking good and what it will take to keep the culture sharp after the team found it this season during their post-4 Nations Face-Off schedule:
A couple days later, is it still tough to process what happened Sunday?
Yeah, yeah, it's a tough feeling around the room right now. That's just the reality of it. When you're that close to advancing and playing another day, the reality of where we are today, it's not a good feeling. That's sports and sometimes you're on the wrong side of it and that night we were.
How do you get over it?
I haven't moved past it right now. The feeling around yesterday with the guys wasn't good and around the locker room today, it's not great. It's not fun cleaning out your locker and knowing how close you were. Sometimes in a series, you're going to get dominated and you walk out of the rink saying, 'They were just the better team.' We felt like we were right there with them, obviously right to the end. That one is going to take a while to get over just because you know you only have so many cracks at competing for the Stanley Cup. We were that close to knocking off the best team in the league and here we are today talking about it instead. It's obviously a disappointing feeling and something that we'll obviously have to think about over the summer, but at the same time, some positives we can take out of the year for sure and we can learn from just the run we had and how tough the league is and how hard playoffs are. It just shows you the fine line of winning and losing and how hard it is to win.
Is this a different team now with the success you've had and Jim Montgomery as the coach? Is this now a playoff team?
Your season's over and you're never a playoff team until you are again next year, and that's kind of the mentality that you have to have. It's a tough league. Do we feel like we're in a better spot now than we were three or four months ago? Absolutely. But at the same time, we have to learn from this year just kind of how hard it is to make the playoffs and we feel like we will get better this summer. We're going to learn from the experiences we had this year and you have to find ways to get better in the summer and that's just individually. When you do that and you kind of hold each other accountable throughout the summer, that's how you get better as a team kind of throughout the year.
Is the theme this summer going to be what you accomplished or the things you want to do next?
You always look back on the year and I think that we grew as a team definitely. Guys have taken massive steps, whether it was maturity or leadership or holding each other accountable. At the end of the day, when you do that off the ice, you feel more connected and more together and that translated on the ice. Like I said, we feel like we have taken a step in the right direction and we have to continue to do that in the locker room and that's, like I said, finding ways in the summer to get better, to be better and come into the year next year expecting to be a good team and at the same time, it's a tough league. Nothing comes for free in the back of the mind, you can't just look that you had a good 25-game run and you made the playoffs. This is only going to fuel us to want more here coming up in the future.
On change in culture, when did you guys start to feel the culture change, how difficult was it and why were you guys able to change it this year?
I would say with culture, it's a funny word because there's so much that goes into it. Culture's always changing. There's going to be new pieces in next year and new faces and that's just kind of the reality of how everything is. I feel like the foundation of the St. Louis Blues, everyone almost has that feeling of they know what it looks like and they know what it feels like and obviously, culture's a tough thing to build up. Once you have it, it's even harder to keep too, right? It's an every day process to continue to have the right culture, and that's habits, that's guys holding each other accountable, and it's details. Like I said, you can't let things slip. I would say you can't let things slip because things change so fast. But at the end of the day, we feel like we're in the right direction and we have taken steps in the right direction. Now we have to continue on working on it.
When you look at this team this year compared to where it was last couple years, what can this room take away positively from what you did coming out of 4 Nations?
We feel we have built something back up in our locker room where guys are going out there and playing hard for one another, playing hard for the organization, the fans, a little bit of everything. That's what ultimately win you hockey games. You have the feeling of the room where you've been on teams where there's a little bit of fakeness there of the word might be where guys are putting on their gear and sometimes guys play a little bit for themselves, and we feel like in this locker room guys are playing for one another. And when you play for one another, you can have the ability to put on runs like we did there down the stretch to get us into the playoffs. We feel like we did a great job of holding each other accountable. Accountability's such an important piece in the locker room because you know showing up to the rink, that the guy next to you is going to give it everything that he has for that game. I think at the end of the day, we had a bunch of guys that were gamers, that are willing to lay it in the line for each other. I think guys feel that. There's lots of positives to take out of this year compared to where we were last year, year and a half ago or even what people were saying what should be done with this team compared to what we're talking about now. It's a feeling of like we're trending in the right direction and we feel with a big summer and guys maturing and guys getting better that we feel like we can be better next year and we expect to be better next year.