St. Louis Blues are the ultimate unconventional underdogs

By making their first Stanley Cup Final appearance in over 40 years, the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues have proven they are the ultimate underdogs.

Last season, the Vegas Golden Knights took the NHL completely by surprise. They made the Stanley Cup Final as an expansion team in their first season. Nobody thought there could be a bigger underdog than them. The 2018-19 St. Louis Blues have proven everybody wrong by surpassing them.

St. Louis entered their game against the Washington Capitals on Jan. 3, 2019 with the worst record in the NHL. They won that game 5-2 and won 29 of their last 44 games to make one of the most surprising turnarounds in NHL history.

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The Blues didn’t do it by conventional methods either. When they fired head coach Mike Yeo and named Craig Berube as their interim head coach, the latter was seen as just a very temporary coach. People expected him to only be the coach until they found a better one, especially with Joe Quenneville on the open market. Six months later, Berube is a Jack Adams Trophy finalist.

They say you should draft and develop centers. However, look at the Blues top four centers, who have carried their team this postseason. They acquired Ryan O’Reilly from the Buffalo Sabres and the Sabres decided he had to go to change the culture. It’s almost like trading great players for peanuts rarely works out.

The Blues traded for Brayden Schenn as well, giving up two first-round picks and Jori Lehtera to the Philadelphia Flyers for him. They signed third-line center Tyler Bozak in free agency and traded for fourth-line center Oskar Sundqvist. Though, judging by the way the fourth line has performed in the postseason, maybe they aren’t actually the fourth line.

St. Louis saw players they loved and went out to get them. During the summer of 2018, they were bold in signing Bozak, Pat Maroon, and David Perron. Each of them played a huge role in getting the Blues not just to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but to the Stanley Cup Final.

They were remarkably quiet at the trade deadline as well. Which, considering the Blues had traded Kevin Shattenkirk and Paul Statsny at consecutive deadlines in 2017 and 2018, was a bit surprising. Their biggest acquisition, Michael Del Zotto, hasn’t even appeared in a postseason game.

Most teams would have blown up their roster after how the 2017-18 season ended – with a historic collapse. However, general manager Doug Armstrong didn’t decide to subtract from his core. Rather, he added to it and made it stronger.

And then there’s rookie goaltender Jordan Binnington. One season ago, the Blues had to persuade the Boston Bruins to let him play for their AHL affiliate after he refused an assignment to the ECHL. Now Binnington’s playing the Bruins in the Stanley Cup Final. That kind of story belongs in a certain Alanis Morissette song.

With Binnington, the Blues overhauled their system. They simplified things – if you get the puck in the defensive zone, just get it out. This resulted in Binnington’s job becoming relatively easy and perhaps helped pump up his numbers a bit.

In the Stanley Cup Playoffs, he’s had to keep pace with, in order, a 2017-18 Vezina Trophy finalist (Conor Hellebuyck), a 2018-19 Vezina Trophy Finalist (Ben Bishop), and a goalie with a lot of postseason success (Martin Jones). Binnington outshined two of them (Hellebuyck and Jones) and matched another (Bishop).

Raise your hand if you had the Blues in the Stanley Cup Final back on New Year’s Day in 2019. If you raised your hand, put it down, you liar. The Blues have overcome one of the worst starts to the season a postseason team has ever had.

One year ago, the Washington Capitals exorcised their postseason demons. The Blues are on the verge of putting an end to their infamous postseason woes. Or maybe they’ll just add to them. But regardless, the Blues are one of the most unexpected, unpredicted, and unconventional Stanley Cup Finalists in a very long time.