It’s no secret that the end to St. Louis Blues season was a heartbreaking one. When I watched that game winning goal by Adam Lowry of the Winnipeg Jets in double overtime of Game 7 of the first round after we were up 2 goals going into the 3rd period, I was devastated but also proud and you should be too.

At the Four Nations break, the Blues were 6th in the central division standings, and it looked like they would miss the playoffs for the 3rd straight year. After the break I began to notice something was different with the team, they came back confident. They went from being a below average team to becoming the best team in hockey in just a few weeks.

This success can be attributed to their head coach Jim Montgomery who took over after the Blues fired head coach Drew Bannister after a 9-12-1 start, in which Montgomery looked to turn the season around. Montgomery already had experience with the Blues as he served as the assistant coach under Craig Berube from 2020-2022. After his tenure with St. Louis he was hired to be the head coach of the Boston Bruins in 2022, where he quickly led the Bruins to have the greatest regular season record in NHL history, boasting 65 wins, 12 losses, and 5 losses in overtime, but they lost in the first round of the playoffs by blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Florida Panthers. After a solid season in 2023, the Bruins let Montgomery go at the start of the 2024-25 season after the Bruins got off to a 8-9-3 start.

Five days after Bannister was fired, the Blues hired Montgomery and signed him to a five-year contract and suddenly everything started to click, especially after the Four Nations tournament. Before the break, the Blues as a team allowed more goals than they scored. They scored 151 goals ranking 25th out of 32 teams in goals scored, while they allowed 171 goals. After the break their offense exploded, they scored an NHL best 99 goals and only let in 60. Offensive units like Jordan Kyrou, Pavel Buchnevich, and Robert Thomas played a key role in this sudden offensive explosion, with Thomas leading the NHL in points after the break with 40, scoring 8 goals, getting 32 assists, and scoring nearly a point and a half per game. Their power play also improved substantially, going from 23rd in power play percentage at 19.1% and 30th in penalty kill percentage at 71.3%, to 7th in power play percentage at 27.5% and 8th in penalty kill percentage at 81.5%.

All these improvements within the team led them to go on their longest winning streak in franchise history, winning 12 consecutive games spanning from March 15th to April 5th, 2025, and make the playoffs for the first time since 2022, where they would play the Winnipeg Jets in the first round, who were considered to be the best team in the NHL boasting a league best 56 wins, 22 losses, and 4 overtime losses. Although they eventually lost, the Blues made the series competitive by bringing the best team in hockey to a game 7, something that not even I expected them to achieve, and that’s why I believe you should be proud of the Blues this season. They vastly exceeded their expectations when everyone else believed their season was dead in the water, going further than expected by making the playoffs and leading the best team in the league that year to the brink of elimination. There is definitely a lot to be optimistic about next season with how this season went.