the song remains the same

[glen a richter]

As for bringing players up who are not entirely ready, DO NOT BRING THEM UP.

Would you be willing to argue that Sammy Blais is less ready than Chris Thorburn? Just because Thorburn looks like Jesus doesn't make him so. We don't need to revert to Hitchcock era hockey just because Schwartz is injured, we need to replace his productivity as best as possible even if that means Blais is getting regular ice time... at the NHL level.

[theohall]

Or argue that 27 year old Wade Megan isn't more suited to the current NHL than Oskar Sundqvist - who keeps getting opportunities, even though the 23 year old looks lost most of the time? The Blues lost a skill player in Schwartz and replaced him with Thompson. Yet, Thompson is now on the 3rd line with Berglund and Sobotka. No one whose played with Berglund and Sobotka (as in Berglund/Sobotka are on the same line) has produced. Is that the most effective use of the skill player brought up? To make him a checking winger?

[glen a richter]

It doesn't help that we're paying a healthy sum to some washed up players (Hey Steen, I'm not only looking at Bouwmeester when I make that statement).

If the team is all in on the youth movement, now would be a good time to get rid of Bouwmeester, Gunnarsson, Steen and letting Stastny walk after his contract is up. It's aggravating that Steen has the NTC as does Bouwmeester--are those full or partial NTC's? If they could magically dump all four salaries, we're looking at clearing 21 million in cap space, and the cheaper, younger replacements are already in the system. This is a pretty solid free agent class coming up, just saying.

But really, seeing that 5.75 mil for Steen for the next 3 years and his performance this season--down in goals, down in assists and a minus-14, it's hard to stomach. Kyrou, Thomas, Kostin, Thompson, Blais, Walman and Schmaltz on D, they're either ready now or ready soon and there's Steener providing a cap hit of 5.75 million until he's 37, and Bouwmeester skating like he's in a pool of molasses for another year. It's hard to take.

The thread title is entirely accurate, and nothing will change until someone steps in and says it's time to change the record. This is a team whose pinnacle moment was a comeback victory in a playoff series they ultimately lost. This is a team that settled for the playoffs for over two decades and never once took the next step, often making an ill advised trade to prepare for the post-season which ultimately made their team worse and other teams better. This is a team that just never seems like it can sustain keeping up with the pace of play in this era of NHL hockey, always reverting to defense first philosophies when the going gets tough, whether it's a Murray, a Hitchcock or a Yeo team. I'm going to go out on a not so long limb right now and say this: if Chicago fires Q, as I suspect they will if they miss the playoffs, it would be the height of irresponsibility for the Blues to not immediately fire Yeo and bring Q back to replace him. We have the personnel that would thrive under a Quennville system for a sustained period of time, and he's grown exponentially as a coach since he was last here.

A lot does fall on the players. It's pathetic that they clearly rely on one teammate (Schwartz) so much that in his absence they fall flat on their faces. But organizationally top to bottom there's a slew of screw-ups. Sundqvist, Thorburn, Bennett... playing Bouwmeester over Dunn, putting youthful skill on lines with old grinders, having no suitable short term answer for the absence of ONE player, having a substandard power play on a team with at least four defensemen capable of QB'ing a powerplay as good as any in the league, having a starting goalie who goes into full meltdown mode like clockwork every year it seems.

This may seem like the classic Blues fan bipolar meltdown, but it's just ridiculous. When Schwartz comes back, the team will go back to winning at a tremendous clip, and this whole swoon will be forgotten. A period of winning will blur the memory of all the subtle little things which are wrong with this team and we'll just keep singing the same song next year and the year after.

[gaijin]

This may seem like the classic Blues fan bipolar meltdown, but it's just ridiculous. When Schwartz comes back, the team will go back to winning at a tremendous clip, and this whole swoon will be forgotten. A period of winning will blur the memory of all the subtle little things which are wrong with this team and we'll just keep singing the same song next year and the year after.

And that's what hurts the most.

The team will play well enough to lead the Front Office to not make/implement any significant changes.

What's the definition of insanity again?

[Oaklandblue]

As for bringing players up who are not entirely ready, DO NOT BRING THEM UP.

Would you be willing to argue that Sammy Blais is less ready than Chris Thorburn? Just because Thorburn looks like Jesus doesn't make him so. We don't need to revert to Hitchcock era hockey just because Schwartz is injured, we need to replace his productivity as best as possible even if that means Blais is getting regular ice time... at the NHL level.

Response in bold and italics. We have quite a few players who are ready or nearing ready in the system that yes, we should look into calling them up BUT that does not solve the problem of the -entire- team plus or minus playing like trash.

Yeo needs to ride them and push them into knocking off this lazy, lacksadaisal type of play they've been performing lately. Too much talent on a team that for many recent games are just skating along. That won't cut it come playoff time. I still say it's a slump and all teams have them.

[cardsfan04]

I agree with Oakland. I think this was just a slump. While I think there's a discussion to be had about how young players are used, an injury to a key guy on the Blues doesn't make a prospect ready for the NHL. He's either ready or he's not. And while there are certainly underperforming players whose production they could match, I think that's also more a sign of the underperforming player having bad production than it is that a prospect is ready.

Megan is an interesting discussion though. I'm unopposed to him being given the chance over somebody like a Sundquist. Megan has been up before and done alright.
But, I don't think he will ever be anything more than a 3rd liner, so I'm not real upset about it either.

Also worth noting, with the incredible start to the season, they bought themselves some time on having to make a risky move. If we were on the outs and needed a jolt, I'd be more inclined to start bringing up some of our prospects.

[glen a richter]

In my perusal of the old rumor mill and various sites, it looks like the idea of trading Robby Fabbri has some legs. Seems that a Fabbri for Mike Hoffman deal might take place sooner than later. I say do it, Fabbri is glass and who knows what his future holds? He could still be great, or he could play 40 games a season, spend half the time injured and be a shell of what he was projected to be.

[Irish Blues]

Good lord, it's just a slump. All yall need to calm down.

Or, ... maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's time to take a cold, hard look in the mirror and see what this team has become: a squad with a great 1st line that's having to carry the team, a decent 2nd line that can't carry the team if the 1st line isn't producing, a 3rd line that's AHL-caliber, a good but not great defensive corps led by a guy who shows enough flashes of brilliance to get you excited and say, "wow, maybe he really could still win a Norris Trophy" before leaving you underwhelmed some more, and an allegedly #1 goalie who at the age of 27 still cannot figure out basic positioning and is getting carved up by NHL players for it.

It's a franchise with a lack of overall depth and especially real NHL-ready depth, which leaves us throwing true rookies into the lineup and lofting gaudy expectations on them and then being shocked when they don't step in and performed like seasoned veterans and has fans already banking on the next generation of allegedly high-caliber prospects who some are ready to tattoo into a top-6 position at first chance, on the assumption that they also will be ready to step in and perform like seasoned veterans.

It's a franchise that has largely stunk at actual player development in the minor league system since the 2005-06 season, because anyone who could be an NHL player got put on the NHL roster at first chance out of necessity and everyone else largely festered in the AHL - which helps contribute to the things noted above.

It's a franchise that took what we thought (and what people around the league thought) was a very highly talented group of players capable of seriously contending for the Cup over multiple years, and transformed it into a group that went 20-27 in the playoffs, won exactly three (3) series in 5 years, and loss 5 of the 7 series in which it had home ice advantage. That group, in its prime, did worse than the Blues from '97-98 to '02-03 [those Blues went 32-30 in games and 5-6 in series, but at least won 3 of the 4 series in which it had home ice advantage].

Face it: we pissed away most of a decade when we should have been going deep into the postseason most years, and now we've got pieces of a roster that people think can be magically transformed into a Cup contender, ... "if only Hoffman and Tavares, and Gretzky and Lemieux and Bossy and Orr and Robinson all cloned and brought back as 21-year olds, ..." This franchise is further away from the Cup than it has been in a long time, and it's not getting close without significant pain.

[Oaklandblue]

Good lord, it's just a slump. All yall need to calm down.

Or, ... maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's time to take a cold, hard look in the mirror and see what this team has become: a squad with a great 1st line that's having to carry the team, a decent 2nd line that can't carry the team if the 1st line isn't producing, a 3rd line that's AHL-caliber, a good but not great defensive corps led by a guy who shows enough flashes of brilliance to get you excited and say, "wow, maybe he really could still win a Norris Trophy" before leaving you underwhelmed some more, and an allegedly #1 goalie who at the age of 27 still cannot figure out basic positioning and is getting carved up by NHL players for it.

It's a franchise with a lack of overall depth and especially real NHL-ready depth, which leaves us throwing true rookies into the lineup and lofting gaudy expectations on them and then being shocked when they don't step in and performed like seasoned veterans and has fans already banking on the next generation of allegedly high-caliber prospects who some are ready to tattoo into a top-6 position at first chance, on the assumption that they also will be ready to step in and perform like seasoned veterans.

It's a franchise that has largely stunk at actual player development in the minor league system since the 2005-06 season, because anyone who could be an NHL player got put on the NHL roster at first chance out of necessity and everyone else largely festered in the AHL - which helps contribute to the things noted above.

It's a franchise that took what we thought (and what people around the league thought) was a very highly talented group of players capable of seriously contending for the Cup over multiple years, and transformed it into a group that went 20-27 in the playoffs, won exactly three (3) series in 5 years, and loss 5 of the 7 series in which it had home ice advantage. That group, in its prime, did worse than the Blues from '97-98 to '02-03 [those Blues went 32-30 in games and 5-6 in series, but at least won 3 of the 4 series in which it had home ice advantage].

Face it: we pissed away most of a decade when we should have been going deep into the postseason most years, and now we've got pieces of a roster that people think can be magically transformed into a Cup contender, ... "if only Hoffman and Tavares, and Gretzky and Lemieux and Bossy and Orr and Robinson all cloned and brought back as 21-year olds, ..." This franchise is further away from the Cup than it has been in a long time, and it's not getting close without significant pain.

Did you really quote me from 3.5 months ago with this? Look at November and December and tell me that you saw this coming, because none of us did. We expected to buy during the TDL, myself included.

Face it, management is incapable of acquiring the pieces to build this team up from where it is. They can keep the team in wash-rinse-repeat mode forever and worry less about winning the Cup and more about keeping the team in budget, regardless the prospects we have or our needs. Bottom line is, management isn't interested in winning the Cup, they're interested in icing a team. Signing Mike Yeo to the contract he has and the inability of Armstrong to trade off dead weight even just for picks tells me what the vision of Stillman is and the answer is the very title of this thread. The Blues should have done what the Rangers did. Get picks, draft well in a really deep draft, Bring up the kids who are ready and build up. They aren't.