The date “January 10th” might not pique too much interest in most folks. But when it comes to the 2018-19 NHL season, it’s a benchmark.
It’s the date the St. Louis Blues turned the beat around. After firing their head coach and putting a rookie netminder between the pipes, they went from being the worst team in the league on Jan. 10 to having the best record in the second half and locking down a playoff spot on March 29. And then, of course, hoisting the Stanley Cup.
It’s the stuff of fairy tales, the kind of storybook come-from-behind journey that sports fans live for.
But as good of a story as the 2019 St. Louis Blues are, their path to success is not one that teams should try to emulate. In fact, it’s a scenario future teams should want to avoid.
For starters, just look at how difficult the start of St. Louis’ season was. They fired bench boss Mike Yeo in November — not even two months into the season. The Blues continued to waffle until early January when they called up goaltender Jordan Binnington, a third-round draft pick who was fourth on St. Louis’ depth chart at the start of the season.
Did things work out? Sure. The Blues went from going 17-20-4 in their first 41 regular-season games to a whopping 25-8-5 in their second 41 games, and ultimately pulling off a dominant playoff run.
But future teams can’t look at that as the ‘CliffsNotes’ path to reaching the Stanley Cup Final.
Or present teams, for that matter.
Let’s take, for example, the 2019-20 San Jose Sharks. The long-time Pacific Division juggernaut got off to a rocky start to their season, then after a monumental month of November where they went 11-4-0, the Sharks came completely undone and plummeted back down to the bottom of the standings. San Jose then fired head coach Peter DeBoer in December and replaced him with Bob Boughner, who has subsequently given most starts to backup goalie Aaron Dell over de facto starter Martin Jones.
Sounds like Team Teal is following in the Bluenotes’ footsteps, right?
Let’s pump the brakes there for just a second.
A lot of things have to happen for any team to completely catapult up the standings in the latter half of the season the way St. Louis did in 2019. That Blues team went from tallying 38 points in the standings through the first 41 games of the season to 61 points in the second half, which meant they not only had to win almost every game, but it also meant handily defeating every team ahead of them in the Central Division standings.
For the 2020 Sharks — who are 20-22-4 with 44 points through 46 games — to pull off the same feat, they would have to win nearly double the number of games they won in the first leg of the campaign. This would require San Jose to reverse their -28 goal differential, preferably in the way of getting scoring contributions from up and down the lineup.
Keep in mind, the Cup-winning Blues had a solid four-line attack by the time they reached the playoffs, which was key to knocking those same Sharks out of the Western Conference Final. This year’s San Jose squad — and all of the teams struggling along with them in the standings — doesn’t have that same kind of depth.
That depth is further challenged when it comes to health. The reigning champs somehow miraculously made it all the way to the Cup Final despite the mounting injuries throughout the course of their season — Vladimir Tarasenko and Alexander Steen are just two key players on the Blues’ roster who were injured as the team made a push for the playoffs. Will this year’s Sharks’ team be able to do the same now that team points-leader Logan Couture, who suffered a fracture to his left ankle on January 7, has to miss extensive time?
Even with a 3-1 win over the Blue Jackets on Thursday, it’s difficult to say if they’ll go on a winning streak.
Of course, the Sharks are just one example. There are currently five teams behind San Jose in the league standings that would have an equally difficult time propelling themselves into a playoff position, let alone going on to make a decent playoff run.
At 25 points through 44 games, it’s highly unlikely the league-last Detroit Red Wings are pulling off any 2019 Blues-esque magic.
Nobody is taking anything away from the monumental run the Blues went on during their 2018-19 campaign, going from last place to winning it all. Using their season as a blueprint going forward is, however, not in a team’s best interest.
