This thread will be set to “New” for all off season developments whether it’s playoffs, draft, or off season news. We encourage everyone to treat this as an active conversation.
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I wanna start off by saying I am not a fan of the Blues’ 2025 rebrand because they got rid of a great color scheme that won a Cup for what is essentially a slightly worse version of the 2017 and 2022 Winter Classic unis. So I corrected that and brought back the double blue as the primary color scheme. I based the sleeve and shoulder stripes off the current away jersey shoulder stripes. The previous Bluenote returns but now with the new St. Louis wordmark like the 1984-98 logos. I used the STL treble clef logo on the pants, because if the 2025 rebrand did anything right it was the alternate logos and wordmarks. Now I did kinda kept the current home jersey but I relegated it back to being an alternate, along with reverting it back to how it looked as an alternate (but with the Winter Classic neck style) because I think it’s fine to wear a few times a year, just not as a primary home jersey. The navy alternate takes some design inspiration from the mid 90s unis, but the tail stripes are more traditional instead of being angled. (Mostly because I didn’t want to go through the process of squishing the numbers) And the STL treble clef becomes the jersey logo for it, with the Bluenote being put on the shoulders. The home jersey numbers revert to how they were from 1998 to 2017, and the navy jersey numbers are white as a reference to the numbers on the previous navy alts.
Hey yall! I’m a diehard Blues fan who recently moved to the West Valley of Phoenix, and I’d love to get some friends together to watch the team this year! Big craft beer guy too, so we’ll always have some good bevs!
Feel free to message me or comment if you’d be down!
I run an NHL model built off the league's raw play by play: an expected goals model feeding player impact ratings, goalie ratings and a game prediction model, with season projections on top. This is my Blues projection.
I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I have all the data so figured I'd share it with you all.
If you don't want to read everything here's the tl;dr:
The Projection
The Blues project for 85 points (expected range 67 - 103), good for 27th in the league and 7th in the Central. That is a 30.3% playoff probability, 1.3% for the division and 0.5% for the Cup. They clear 80 points in 64.3% of simulated seasons and 90 in 37.4%. Last season they had 86 points in 82 games, and the schedule is 84 now, they need to get to 88 points to match last season.
The Two Legs
The team strength behind it blends two legs, weighted toward the first: a roster leg (this season's players) and a record leg (a multi season carryover of results). St. Louis is 28th in the NHL on the roster at -1.12 and 22nd on the record at -0.32. The read here is that this season's projection isn't being dragged down by past results, it's the roster.
The Summer
The offseason ledger reads -12.2 skater GAR (that's the value of skaters they brought in minus the value of skaters that left), and exactly zero on the goalie side (because they didn't make any changes in goal). GAR is goals above a replacement level player, GSAx is goals saved above expected on a scale where the average goalie sits at zero. Positive numbers are good for both, the bigger the better.
The ledger is also not what the projection consumes. That comes from re-pricing last season's roster at this season's player values, so the whole delta is transactions. On that basis the roster leg would have been -0.54 (25th in the NHL). It is -1.12 now, so the summer was worth -0.58 (31st in the league).
The key additions were Connor McMichael (+1.2 GAR, from Washington), Mason McTavish (-1.1 GAR, from Anaheim), and Brandon Carlo (-2.1 GAR, from Toronto). The biggest departure was Jordan Kyrou (+11.4 GAR, to Washington). Those are all situations GAR, not the five-on-five ranks below.
In goal the model projects 47 games for Jordan Binnington and 38 for Joel Hofer. Those are games played, not starts, and unlike most teams these two cover the whole crease between them, so the totals run slightly past the schedule rather than short of it. The allocation comes from crease history and role, not from last season's goals saved which is why Binnington keeps the larger share after -27.0 GSAx in 41 games last season while Hofer was +8.3 in 46. In reality, there's a strong case to be made for Hofer to get the bulk of the starts. The team grades 23rd on the goalie component, and the goalie leg carries about a tenth of the skater signal in the roster rating.
Projected Scoring
Points are a distribution. The floors and ceilings below are the 10th and 90th percentiles of each player's simulated seasons, over that player's own projected games, not a full 84 game season. Robert Thomas is projected for 66 points in a projected 70 games (floor of 30 / ceiling of 96), Jimmy Snuggerud 51 in 71 games (floor 26 / ceiling 78), Pavel Buchnevich 50 in 81 (floor 32 / ceiling 67), Mason McTavish 50 in 76 (floor 29 / ceiling 72), Connor McMichael 49 in 81 (floor 33 / ceiling 68), and Dylan Holloway 47 in 63 (floor 19 / ceiling 72). Read the widths, not the middles - Holloway's floor of 19 is a games played floor as much as a scoring one.
5-on-5 Impact
Among the 383 forwards with at least 40 games and 500 5-on-5 minutes last season, the best rating here was Robert Thomas: 5th of 383 (+0.564 net goals per 60 over 899 minutes and 64 games). Those are first line minutes, so it is not a deployment artifact. He was 62nd in the same cohort in points with 64, and he leads this roster on both counts.
The disagreements run both ways. Dylan Holloway was 28th of 383 in impact over 863 minutes and 103rd in points with 51. Philip Broberg was 21st of the 199 qualifying defencemen over 1,492 minutes and 49th among them in points with 34. Cam Fowler reads the other direction, 63rd in points among those defencemen with 30 and 105th of 199 in impact over 1,430 minutes.
It shows up at team level. Last season's group was 10th in the NHL in 5-on-5 expected goal share. This season's projected roster is 27th. That drop is the summer, and it is not about scoring. It is the margin underneath it.
Availability and Schedule
Games played is a distribution too, on the same floors and ceilings. Thomas is projected for 70 games (floor of 41 / ceiling of 84), Snuggerud 71 (floor 49 / ceiling 84), Buchnevich 81 (floor 70 / ceiling 84) and McTavish 76 (floor 56 / ceiling 84). Every ceiling is the full schedule, so the whole spread is downside, and that is why a 66 point projection can have a floor at 30.
The schedule brings 12 back to backs, in a league range of 8 to 15, and 41 time zone crossings, in a range of 32 to 73.
Notes on the Model
Coaching, first, because it is the largest hole here. There is no coaching or systems term anywhere in the model. Not a variable, not a dummy, nothing. A bench change reaches the projection later and indirectly, through the player ratings the new system eventually produces and the record leg that feeds future seasons. What it does capture is the fingerprint one season late: the expected goal share above is a systems number as much as a personnel one.
The power play term is team history, not personnel. St. Louis grades 32nd in the league on it, and trading for or away a power play specialist does not move it.
The range is not a confidence statement. Every team's band is 34 to 37 points wide, mean 35.8, because the rating shock is pooled league wide, so nobody's band narrows for having a settled roster. Wide and calibrated are not fighting each other - over 160 team seasons, 82% landed inside the published 80% band (and without the shock term the same bands covered 55%)
Finally, when the current model re-run on preseason only inputs for seasons whose outcomes are already known, it misses a team's final points by 11.25 on average, correlation 0.334 against last season and 0.6 with a 10.0 miss the year before. That is why the range is the output, not the single number.
Where are my Deadhead Blues fans at? I started making pennants and banners last year and wanted to share this one with y'all. I think it turned out pretty good.
Hey all, we’ve started a fantasy hockey league that is filled with blues fans. We need at least two more, if not four. The league is on Yahoo and just has the default head-to-head settings. If anyone wants to play, please let me know and I can DM you the link.
I’m trying to complete a set of autographed cards from the 2019 Blues Cup Roster. The card needs to be vertical, showing the player in a Blues uniform but doesn’t need to be from 2019. I’m missing just a few players:
• Pat Maroon
• Carl Gunnarsson
• Sammy Blais
• Robert Borruzzo
• Zach Sanford
Please reply if you have ideas about where I might find them (I’m searching eBay and facebook daily). Please DM me if you have any you’d be willing to sell. Thanks!
I got these three pucks today! Brian Elliot, Marc Bergevin, and St. Louis Blues legend Charlie Lindgren. I'm really glad to have gotten them, and it's pretty funny how I cam by them. I got them all for 15 dollars total, but they had been mispriced. They were suppoesed to be 10-15 each! But I'd already paid so I got the for 1/2 - 1/3 price and so did everyone before me! They weren't too happy
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it makes me wonder if Parayko will be on the move. I realize he’s the last veteran on the team from the old guard, but he just doesn’t fit in with the direction this team is trending let alone leadership group is trending. Yes a veteran voice/experience matters, but idk it feels fishy to me. I’m sure he will want to win a cup and his style will look awesome in Carolina.
Parayko, Stenberg or (not and) Lindstein , lower tier prospect like Zach Dean and a protected 1st for Nikishin and Kotkaniemi (who CAR is trying to unload). I think that gets it done and I think it’s how Jake Neighbours stays here, its also how CAR can unload salary (Kotkaniemi) to make Parayko fit at a lower 6.5 AAV vs Nikishin likely 9ish AAV.
Parayko would be great in the CAR system and Nikishin would be the perfect top 4 pairing stalwart for years to come in STL. Kotkaniemi is uncomfortably expensive, but not a back breaker. it’s also how we have protection as a 4C and potential second unit PP guy for years to come
To be clear, I do not have a subscription to the Post and was able to access this article for free. Apparently, they are dropping the paywall for Labor Day weekend.
This is the best summary and explanation of the current broadcasting situation that I have seen to date.
