NHL coaches come and go so often, teams should keep a UPS truck parked outside the arena, waiting to haul the discarded gaffer to the recycling plant. There’s an old saying: coaches are hired to be fired. In the NHL, coaches are fired so they can be fired again at...
BLUE NOTES The bizarro Blues did it again on Thursday night. The circuitry in their on/off switch went crazy. On, off. On, off. On, off. Inspired hockey, followed by Insipid hockey. Leads taken, leads blown. The Blues show determination, then no-show and disappear....
BLUE NOTES The Blues are all over the map, and I’m not referring to last week’s trip into Canadian territory. The recent trend is … volatile. There was the 6-2 home loss to Arizona, followed by a fine 4-2 win over visiting Pittsburgh. The itinerary in Canada started...
In reading some of the prognostications from NHL scriveners scattered around North America, I hadn’t realized that the Blues had either gone out of business, or relocated to Saskatoon. OK, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. But most hockey authors have dismissed the Blues...
When team captain Alex Pietrangelo left the Blues for a stratospheric free-agent deal with the Vegas Golden Knights, I didn’t participate in the blame game. My feelings could be summed up in four parts. 1. Petro was a fantastic all-purpose, indefatigable defenseman...
The End of an Era doesn’t have to be graceful and classy. But you hope that it can be steady. Sometimes it’s just time to move on, with a natural if disappointing transition from good to bad, with familiar-favorite players being eased out or traded to clear room for a...
The Blues are on break until returning to game action on Feb. 11. They’re having a good rest, which kind of describes the intensity of their effort in recent weeks. The Note is 23-25-3 for a points percentage (.480) that ranks 25th among the 32 NHL teams. They swerved...
The Blues will try to protect the castle again on Monday night when Ottawa visits Enterprise Center to test The Note’s vulnerability on home ice. This topic is now A Thing to be discussed. And why not? The Blues have dropped two in a row at the home rink and are...
In a number of ways, the unpredictable, yo-yo Blues are doing the exact opposite of what we expect them to do. They’re winning games at a rate that puts them only two points out of the second wild–card spot in the Western Conference. As of Monday morning...
