St. Louis Blues

The St. Louis Blues are a professional men's ice hockey team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The team is named after the famous W. C. Handy song "St. Louis Blues". The team plays in the 19,150 capacity Scottrade Center arena in downtown St. Louis.

Franchise history

Early history (1967-70)
The Blues were one of the six teams added to the NHL in the 1967 expansion, along with the Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and California Seals when the league doubled in size from its Original Six. They are, along with the Los Angeles Kings and California Seals, one of the three teams from the 1967 Expansion not to have won a Stanley Cup.
St. Louis was the last of the expansion teams to officially get into the league, chosen over Baltimore at the insistence of the Chicago Blackhawks. The Blackhawks were owned at that time by the influential Wirtz family of Chicago, who also owned, and sought to unload, the then-decrepit St. Louis Arena, which hadn't been well-maintained since the 1940s. The team's first owners were insurance tycoon Sid Salomon Jr., his son, Sid Salomon III, and Robert L. Wolfson, who were granted the franchise in 1966. Sid Salomon III convinced his initially wary father to make a bid for the team. Salomon then spent several million dollars on massive renovations for the 38-year-old Arena, which increased the number of seats from 12,000 to 15,000.
The Blues were originally coached by Lynn Patrick who, after a quick resignation, was replaced by Scotty Bowman. Although the league's rules effectively kept star players with the Original Six teams, the Blues managed to stand out in the inferior Western Division. Capitalizing on a playoff format that required an expansion team to make it to the Stanley Cup finals, the Blues made it to the final round in each of their first three seasons, though they were swept first by the Montreal Canadiens in 1968 and 1969 and then the Boston Bruins in 1970.
While the first Blues' teams included aging and faded veterans like Doug Harvey, Don McKenney and Dickie Moore, the veteran goaltending tandem of Glenn Hall and Jacques Plante proved more durable, winning a Vezina Trophy in 1969 behind a sterling defense that featured players like skilled defensive forward Jim Roberts and hardrock defensemen, brothers Bob and Barclay Plager. Phil Goyette won the Lady Byng Trophy for the Blues in 1970 and New York Rangers castoff Red Berenson became the expansion team's first major star at center. The Arena quickly became one of the loudest buildings in the NHL, a reputation it maintained throughout its tenure as the Blues' home.
During that time, Salomon gained a reputation throughout the league as the ultimate players' owner. He gave his players cars, signed them to deferred contracts, and treated them to vacations in Florida. The players, used to being treated like mere commodities, felt the only way they could pay him back was to give their best on the ice every night.

The Blues' Struggles (1970-77)
The Blues' successes in the late 1960s, however, did not continue into the 1970s as the playoff format changed and the Chicago Blackhawks were moved into the Western Division to bring strength to the still-inferior division. Further, the Blues lost Bowman, who went to Montreal following a power-sharing dispute with Sid Salomon III (who was taking an increasing role in team affairs), as well as Hall, Plante, Goyette, and ultimately Berenson, who were lost to retirement or trade. The Berenson trade, however, did bring then-Red Wings star center Garry Unger, who ultimately scored 30 goals in eight consecutive seasons while breaking the NHL's consecutive games played record.
Defensively, however, the Blues were less than stellar and saw Chicago and the Philadelphia Flyers overtake the division. After missing the playoffs for the first time in 1973-74, the Blues ended up in the Smythe Division after a realignment. This division, too, was particularly weak, and in 1976-77 the Blues won it while finishing five games below .500, though this would be their last playoff appearance in the decade.
In the meantime, the franchise was on the brink of financial collapse. This was partly due to the pressures of the World Hockey Association, but mostly the result of financial decisions made when the Salomons first got the franchise. For instance, the deferred contracts came due just as the Blues' performance began to slip. At one point, the Salomons and cut the team's staff down to three employees. One of them was Emile Francis, who served as team president, general manager and coach.

Purina Era (1977-83)
The Salomons finally found a buyer in St. Louis-based pet food giant Ralston Purina in 1977, who renamed the Arena "the Checkerdome." Francis and Minority owner Wolfson helped put together the deal with Ralston Purina, which ensured that the Blues would stay in St. Louis. Only a year after finishing with only 18 wins (still the worst season in franchise history), the Blues made the playoffs in 1980, the first of 25 consecutive playoff appearances. The team's improvement continued into 1981, when the Berenson-coached team, led by Wayne Babych (54 goals), future Hall of Famer Bernie Federko (104 points), Brian Sutter (35 goals) and goaltender Mike Liut (second to Wayne Gretzky for the Hart Trophy), finished with 45 wins and 107 points, the second best record in the league. Their regular season success, however, did not translate into the playoffs as they were eliminated by the New York Rangers in the second round. The Blues followed their generally successful 1980-81 campaign with two consecutive sub-.500 seasons, though they still managed to make playoffs each year.
Purina lost an estimated $1.8 million a year during its ownership of the Blues, but took the losses philosophically, having taken over out of a sense of civic responsibility. In 1983, Purina's longtime chairman, R. Hal Dean, retired. His successor wanted to refocus on the core pet food business, and had no interest in hockey. He only saw a division that was bleeding money, and put the Blues on the market. The Blues didn't pick anyone in the 1983 NHL Entry Draft because Purina didn't send a representative; the company basically abandoned the team. It finally found a buyer in a group of investors led by WHA and Edmonton Oilers founder Bill Hunter. Hunter then made plans to move the team to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. However, the NHL was unwilling to lose a market as big as St. Louis and vetoed the deal. Hunter then padlocked the Checkerdome and turned the team over to the league. The team appeared destined for contraction when, on July 27, Harry Ornest, a Los Angeles-based businessman, came in at the 11th hour to save the franchise. Ornest immediately renamed the Checkerdome back to the St. Louis Arena.

Road to a new arena (1983-96)
Ornest ran the Blues on a shoestring budget. However, the players didn't mind, because (according to Sutter) they badly wanted to stay in St. Louis. For instance, he asked many players to defer their salaries to help meet operating costs, but they always got paid in the end. During most of his tenure, the Blues had only 26 players under contract--23 in St. Louis, plus three on their farm team in Montana. Most NHL teams during the mid-1980s had over 60 players under contract.
Despite being run on the cheap, the Blues remained competitive even though they never finished more than six games over .500 in Ornest's three years as owner. During this time, Doug Gilmour, drafted by St. Louis in 1982, emerged as a star.
However, while the Blues remained competitive, they were unable to keep many of their young players. More often than not, several of the Blues' young guns ended up as Calgary Flames, and the sight of Flames executive Al MacNeil was always greeted with dread. In fact, several of the Blues' young stars, such as Rob Ramage and Gilmour, were main cogs in the Flames' 1989 Stanley Cup win. Sutter and Federko were probably the only untouchables.
By 1986, they reached the league semi-finals against the Flames. Doug Wickenheiser's overtime goal in game six to cap a furious comeback remains one of the greatest moments in team history, known locally as the "Monday Night Miracle", but they lost game seven 2-1. After that season, Ornest sold the team to a group led by St. Louis businessman Michael Shanahan.
The Blues kept chugging along through the late 1980s and early 90s. General Manager Ron Caron made astute moves, landing Brett Hull, Adam Oates, Curtis Joseph, Brendan Shanahan and Al MacInnis, among others. While they contended during this time period, they never passed the second round of the playoffs. Still, the Blues' on-ice success was enough for a consortium of 19 companies to buy the team. They also provided the capital to build the Kiel Center (now the Scottrade Center), which opened in 1994.
Brett Hull, "The Golden Brett" became one of the league's top superstars and a scoring sensation, netting 86 goals in 1990-91 — third only to Wayne Gretzky (who played in St. Louis briefly in 1996) in NHL history — (Gretzky had a 92-goal 1981-82 season and an 87-goal 1982-83 NHL season). Only "The Great One" has found the net more often than Hull over any given three seasons. The Blues were the second-best team in the regular season in 90-91, but a second-round defeat to the Minnesota North Stars was indicative of their playoff woes.

From President's Trophy to the League Basement (1997-2006)
Mike Keenan was hired as both general manager and coach prior to the abbreviated 1995 season. It was hoped that he could cure the post-season turmoil Blues fans had endured for years. He instituted major changes, among them trades that sent away fan favorites Brendan Shanahan and Curtis Joseph, as well as the acquisition of the legendary but aging Gretzky and goalie Grant Fuhr, both from the falling-apart Los Angeles Kings (Gretzky left for the New York Rangers as an unrestricted free agent following the season). In spite of all he was prophesied to accomplish, Keenan's playoff resume with St. Louis included a first-round exit in 1995 and a second-round exit in 1996. He was fired on December 19, 1996. Caron was reinstated as interim general manager for the rest of season, and current GM Larry Pleau was hired on June 9, 1997. But that did not stop Hull, who had nevertheless endured a lengthy feud with Keenan, from leaving for the Dallas Stars in 1998, who went on to win the Stanley Cup the next year.
Defensemen Chris Pronger (acquired from the Hartford Whalers in 1995 for Shanahan), Pavol Demitra, Pierre Turgeon, Al MacInnis, and goalie Roman Turek kept the Blues a contender. In 1999-2000, they notched a franchise-record 114 points during the regular season, earning the Presidents' Trophy for the league's best record. However, they were stunned by the San Jose Sharks in the first round in seven games. In 2001, the Blues advanced to the Western Conference Finals before bowing out in five games to eventual Champions Colorado Avalanche. They remained competitive for the next three years, but never got past the second round.
Despite years of mediocrity and the stigma of never being able to "take the next step", the Blues were a playoff presence every year from 1980 to 2004 — the second longest active streak in North American professional sports at the time. Amid several questionable personnel moves and an unstable ownership situation, the Blues finished the 2005-06 season with their worst record in 27 years. They missed the playoffs for only the fourth time in franchise history. Also, for the first time in club history, the normally excellent support seen by St. Louisans began to fade away, with crowds normally numbering around 12,000, a far cry from the team's normal high (about 18,000 in a 19,500 seat arena).
Wal-Mart heir Nancy Walton Laurie and her husband Bill purchased the Blues in 1999, but on June 17, 2005 announced that they would sell the team. Bill Laurie had long desired to buy an NBA team, and it was thought that this desire caused him to neglect the Blues. On September 29, 2005 it was announced that the Lauries had signed an agreement to sell the Blues to SCP Worldwide, a consulting and investment group headed by former Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts. On November 14, 2005 the Blues announced that SCP Worldwide had officially withdrawn from negotiations to buy the team. On December 27, 2005 it was announced that the Blues had signed a letter of intent to exclusively negotiate with General Sports and Entertainment, LLC. However, after the period of exclusivity, SCP entered the picture again. On March 24, 2006, the Lauries completed the sale of the Blues and the lease to the Savvis Center to SCP and TowerBrook Capital Partners, L.P.
Under new management, the Blues promptly installed John Davidson as president of hockey operations, moving Pleau to a mostly advisory role. The former Rangers goalie promptly made some big deals, picking up Jay McKee, Bill Guerin and Manny Legace from free agency, and bringing Doug Weight back to St. Louis after a brief (and productive) stopover in Carolina. Weight was again traded in December 2007 to Anaheim along with a minor league player in exchange for Andy McDonald. Davidson is currently attempting to build a strong American base of players for the Blues.

The Rebuilding: Present (2006-)
Following the disappointing 2005-06 season, which saw the Blues with the worst record in the NHL, the new management focused on rebuilding the franchise. At the beginning of the 2007 season, the Blues looked to be competitive in the Central Division. However, injuries plagued the team all season, and the lack of a sniper hampered them as well. Fan support was sluggish during the first half of the campaign, and the end of the calendar year was capped by an 11-game losing streak. On December 11, 2006, the Blues fired coach Mike Kitchen and replaced him with former Los Angeles Kings coach Andy Murray. On January 4, 2007, the Blues had a record of 6-1-3 in their previous 10 games, which was the best in the NHL during that stretch. Despite a healthy 24-point jump from the previous season, the strain of playing in a conference where seven teams finished with more than 100 points kept them out of the playoffs for the second year in a row.
Immediately prior to the 2007 Trade Deadline, the Blues traded several key players, such as Bill Guerin, Keith Tkachuk, and Dennis Wideman to gain draft picks and to make a final push for the playoffs. (They later re-signed Tkachuk during the offseason.) Brad Boyes, picked up from the Bruins in exchange for Wideman, is the fastest Blues player to reach 20 goals since Brett Hull.
During the offseason, the Blues signed free agent Paul Kariya to a 3-year contract worth $18 million, re-signed defenseman Barret Jackman to a one-year contract, lost their captain Dallas Drake to the Detroit Red Wings, and traded prospect Carl Soderberg to the Boston Bruins in exchange for yet more depth in the goalie crease, Hannu Toivonen.
On October 2, 2007 the Blues finalized the season starting roster, which included rookies David Perron, Steven Wagner, and Erik Johnson. On October 10, 2007, the Blues introduced a new mascot: Louie.
On December 14, 2007 the Blues traded Doug Weight, a 38 year old four time All Star Center, to the Anaheim Ducks as part of a package to acquire 30 year old Center Andy McDonald.
As of December 22nd 2007, the Blues telecast on FSN Midwest was estimated to be reaching 30,000 households per game. This is up 125% compared to the same time last year.

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