COLUMN: Blues turning season around under new coach

After starting a losing streak with a blown lead in a home loss to Vegas, then extending it to four with a blown lead in another home loss to Detroit, a change had to be made.

Out goes head coach Craig Berube, who led the St. Louis Blues to the Stanley Cup championship in 2019 as an interim coach. In comes Drew Bannister, who spent most of his NHL playing career with the Tampa Bay Lightning in the mid-1990s and was previously the head coach of the Blues-affiliated AHL team in Springfield.

If Berube was typecasted as a police chief, Bannister looks the part of a federal government agent.

Since the change, the Blues (17-15-1) won four of their last five games, including a 7-5 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday, Dec. 23, in St. Louis.

“I believe in this team,” Bannister said. “I know that that group believes in them and tonight kind of solidifies that.”

There’s nothing unique about a head coach in the NHL getting fired before the holidays. Berube was only the third head coach, after Jay Woodcroft (Edmonton Oilers) and Dean Evason (Minnesota Wild), to get sacked this season. It’s usually the first thing the front office tries to do to rejuvenate their team’s chances at a playoff run.

“I think it’s just everyone stepping up,” said Blues center Rob Thomas, who scored the first goal of the game. “I think that’s the most important thing, coming together as a team. Most of the time it’s not on the coaches. It’s on the players inside of the room, and we’ve done a good job responding to that.”

The Blues entered the third period down 5-2 after a goal from Blackhawks forward Nick Foligno. A tip-in goal from Brandon Saad was the first of five unanswered goals in the third period to rally St. Louis to victory.

“I think that’s a big character win for our group,” Saad said. “Any time you can battle back, it’s getting late, you can kind of give up, but our group always believed. We talked at intermission that we were going to come back and win and, thankfully, we did.”

Saad’s ninth goal of the season was followed up by Jake Neighbours’ 11th goal of the season. And like a good neighbor, Jordan Kyrou was there to tie the game at 5-5 with a goal of his own 24 seconds later.

Justin Faulk’s second goal of the season gave the Blues the 6-5 lead with 2:07 remaining in the third period, and Kyrou’s empty-net goal with 1:01 left was the star on top of the Christmas tree.

The Blues are now 1-14-0 when trailing after two periods.

“The easiest thing to do is just finish the game and pack up your bags to go home for Christmas for three days,” Bannister said. “They found a way, they dug in and they deserve a lot of credit for that.”

It was enough of a Christmas miracle to make you scream Hallelujah and ask for the Tylenol.

The string of wins has the Blues (35 points) back in the hunt within a point of the Arizona Coyotes (36 points) for the final wild card spot entering the holiday break.

“For us, we can’t look at the standings, who we’re playing,” Bannister said. “We have to win hockey games. It doesn’t matter who we play.”

__Bedard is the real deal__

The fact that the hottest rookie in the NHL is the same age as some of the high school seniors who will be playing basketball in the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament on Tuesday, Dec. 26, is dumbfounding to me.

Connor Bedard, the first overall pick of the 2023 NHL Draft, is 18 years old and leads not just the Chicago Blackhawks in goals (13) and assists (17), but also all rookies. On Saturday, he dazzled the crowd at the Enterprise Center when he balanced the puck with the tip of his stick while rounding the net to score the seemingly easy lacrosse-style goal in the first period.

“There was just no one there, and just thought it was a good play, and yeah, kind of went for it,” Bedard said during a TV interview between periods.

Bedard’s goal came right after Thomas scored his team-leading 13th goal within the first four minutes of the game.

“Talented play and I think it shocked all of us,” Thomas said of Bedard’s goal. “That’s a hard play to stop and it takes a lot of skill to do that at that speed.”

To make the moment even sweeter, Bedard pulled off the "Michigan" goal in front of NHL legend Wayne Gretzky, who played for the Blues in 1996 and is considered the greatest hockey player ever.

"He's been better than we probably anticipated," Gretzky said of Bedard during an in-game TV interview. "I couldn't do what he did tonight."

Between Bedard and the slew of young stars to have come out of St. Louis, it should be enough to compel Jackson to look into hockey.