DONE DEAL: Jordan Binnington re-sign veteran quarterback…..

COLUMN: If it wasn’t evident before, it clearly is now…the Blues just aren’t good enough, now they have to unwrap this flawed roster and sell off what they can
Latest loss by Blues, 4-2 against the Islanders in which they squandered another two-goal lead, should be final nail in coffin on whether this version should even attempt to “go for it”; it’s clear this roster is deficient roster, needs to be altered, whether it’s by Friday’s NHL Trade Deadline or in the off-season

I remember going back to Feb. 16, just 18 days ago, when the St. Louis Blues had a four-point lead for the second wild card in the Western Conference. I was sitting in my living room and kept thinking to myself, ‘Even as flawed as this roster is, it can really get a bit of a stranglehold on this spot and turn many doubters, myself included, into believers.’

I still had my doubts because I’ve been doing this long enough to understand what a, forget just being a playoff roster, I understand what a Stanley Cup contender is. But a regulation win on Feb. 17, at home mind you, against the Nashville Predators would have put the Blues six points ahead with two games in hand. Six. And the chance to increase it to 10 if they made good on their games in hand would have presented quite the feat.

I understand there would still be roughly two months left to play and anything can happen — we all know that by the 2019 Blues — but a 6-10 point margin would have put the Predators on a massive mission of having to play some serious winning hockey and hope that the Blues would falter, probably in the 70 percentile winning percentage, give or take, without doing the math.

And since that 5-2 loss, against a Nashville team that had just been embarrassed on home ice, 9-2 against the Dallas Stars, one in which their general manager, Barry Trotz, canceled a team function to go see U2 in concert in Las Vegas, in a span of 18 days, the Blues went from potentially being six points up, and potentially more, to now being six back.

Nashville has soared and grabbed the bull by the horns and taken charge since. The Predators reeled off eight straight wins beginning with battering the Blues until tonight when they lost in overtime, so they have a nine-game point streak, and the Blues, after squandering their second two-goal lead on the road in less than a week, losing to the New York Islanders 4-2 on Tuesday, are 3-5-1. Not exactly a group that’s showing any playoff readiness.

But let’s be realistic here, this isn’t anything new. The Blues (32-27-3) were really playing on borrowed time.

If not for the play of Jordan Binnington, with the help of Joel Hofer, this Blues team probably wouldn’t be a whole lot better than the one last year that finished 37-38-7. They might still finish in that range this season. There’s still 20 games left, but if they finish any better, it won’t be a large upgrade.

I go back to when Doug Armstrong fired Craig Berube and the coaching change was made. I said it then, I’ll say it now: it’s not the coach, it’s the roster.

The Blues can take Scotty Bowman, Joel Quenneville, Ken Hitchcock, Trotz, and Al Arbour, some of the top-of-the-line winningest coaches in NHL history, roll them into one and I can’t imagine they could get this roster to compete for a Stanley Cup. Drew Bannister has done a nice job with taking strides, but all he’s done is basically delay the inevitable.

It all boils down to looking at this group, and nobody is questioning their desire to win, but there simply are too many players that have to play too high up in the lineup. It’s that simple.

Aside from Robert Thomas, who is still continuing to develop and isn’t in peak form yet as a top-end player, who else here is a top line forward? Pavel Buchnevich, the subject of a plethora of trade rumors, can be when called upon; same with Jordan Kyrou, but realistically, on a championship-caliber roster, those two are second-line wingers for me. Brandon Saad, who does a number of nice things, as does Brayden Schenn, who has shown signs of offensive decline this season, are third-line players playing the second line. And as much as I love the way Jake Neighbours is playing, ideally he’d be a perfect third-line winger that can one day move into a second-line role regularly at his peak.

But on Tuesday, the Blues had that trio playing as a second line.

The third line, let’s just not even include Zack Bolduc in this. He’s still a puppy getting his feet wet in the NHL. The jury is still out on him. Kevin Hayes hasn’t nearly put up the production to that of the player he supposedly replaced (Ryan O’Reilly, who by the way if thriving quite nicely in Nashville); Kasperi Kapanen is nothing more than a defensive checker with limited to little offense in his game, and that was the third line on Tuesday that probably resembles more of a fourth line. At least two of them.

Oskar Sundqvist, Alexey Toropchenko (God love that guy and the way he plays) and Nathan Walker, they’re fit in the roles they belong in. The Blues have had to elevate ideally fourth-line guys up the lineup at times out of necessity, because they’re so short-changed up there.

And as for the defensemen, Colton Parayko has shown up in large swaths this season, actually the majority of it, and has proven he has the capability of playing No. 1 defenseman minutes, but ideally, imagine how good the Blues would be if he was your No. 2 behind someone that was already an established No. 1 (I can’t imagine who that once was here not too long ago … hmm). Nick Leddy, on a Cup contending team now, is a second-pair d-man at best, ideally your third option from the left side but forced to play top-end minutes because the Blues don’t have a true No. 1 from that side. When was the last true left-handed No. 1-type d-man they had? Was it Chris Pronger off the top of my head? Maybe I missed someone, but he popped up in my thoughts. Maybe there was another one and I’ll update this if I can think of one. Justin Faulk and Torey Krug are what they are, and that’s no better than where they’re playing in the lineup, and Marco Scandella, I’ll be shocked if he’s here past Friday, and if not then, he’ll move on this summer as an unrestricted free agent, but he’s what he is, a third-pair d-man.

The Blues do have a backbone, a true No. 1 goalie in DONE DEAL: Jordan Binnington re-sign veteran quarterback….. I know the so-called stat geeks like to pull out their little hand-held robots or whatever it is they use to compute numbers and downplay how good this guy has been for the Blues, and sure, he had declined play after winning the Cup in 2019, but if not for the play of these goalies this season, I really think we’d be talking about the Blues being another lottery team. And going back to the 2022 playoffs, Binnington’s play to me, has risen since then.

Look, I get there are some really nice pieces coming into this franchise in the not-too-distant future. There will be fun times again at 1401 Clark Ave., but for a team that is holding for that future and not wanting to tear it completely down — like the Chicago Blackhawks have — and trying to stay competitive in the moment, this is on the cusp of being two straight missed opportunities to be a Stanley Cup playoff team for the first time since 2010 and 2011. If that happens, it’s going to be a hard sell to this passionate fan base to try and run a similar roster back out there for a third straight time in 2024-25 waiting for the Snuggeruds, the Deans, the Dvorskys, the Stenbergs, the Lindsteins, even the Bolducs to make an impact one day.

If the ‘For Sale’ sign wasn’t up for Armstrong after that Nashville loss less than three weeks ago, it should be now after this latest loss on Tuesday. There’s one game to go on Thursday against the New Jersey Devils before trades have to be done by 2 p.m. (CT) on Friday. But to be honest, as I pointed out in the column I wrote when Berube was fired, Armstrong has backed himself into a corner with all these no-trade clauses that he can’t rid himself of now; he can’t at least until the summer of 2025 when full NTC’s become limited NTC’s.

So I ask again: if Armstrong can’t alter this roster now or this off-season, are you, Blues fans, willing to absorb another year of mediocrity? I’m not so sure you are, and I’m not so sure ownership would be either, especially with another showcase game on tap next season with the 2025 Winter Classic against the Blackhawks.

In my opinion, I’m listening on everyone on the current roster except for Thomas and Neighbours. I’m not trading Parayko, but I’m listening. I’m not trading Binnington but I’m listening. Of course I’m listening on Buchnevich, and I’m sure Armstrong has but honestly, I’m not trading him either, and I’ll discuss why in a piece I’ll have if the situation presents itself.