A veteran of over 1,000 video games as a participant, Berube is greatest recognized for the magical run he led the Blues on after taking up in a mid-season teaching change in 2018-19.
With the Blues struggling to seek out any type of success underneath Mike Yeo, common supervisor Doug Armstrong made a training change and positioned management over the crew in Berube’s palms.
That call paid virtually rapid dividends. The Blues went on a scorching-hot run to shut out the common season after which gained their franchise’s first Stanley Cup in dramatic trend: a dominant game-seven highway victory in opposition to a powerful Boston Bruins crew.
Berube’s management led the Blues to the Stanley Cup championship that had eluded them for therefore lengthy. For that, he’ll at all times be remembered as a legend in St. Louis.
That being stated, since that Stanley Cup run the Blues have been on an simple decline. They misplaced within the first spherical in consecutive years following the championship, after which rebounded in 2021-22 and gained one playoff collection.
However a 37-38-7 document final season uncovered some severe cracks within the Blues’ basis, and a middling 13-14-1 begin to this marketing campaign was the ultimate nail within the coffin for Berube.
It’s truthful to query whether or not the decline of the Blues is finally all the way down to Berube’s teaching, or personnel choices made by the entrance workplace. On one hand, the Blues have an undeniably gifted crew, they spend to the wage cap, and will in all probability be performing higher than they’re proper now simply assessing issues on paper.
However alternatively, there have been some particular missteps from the entrance workplace. Before everything, the crew has seemingly not recovered from captain Alex Pietrangelo’s choice to go away and signal with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Moreover, gamers equivalent to Torey Krug, Nick Leddy, Marco Scandella, Kasperi Kapanen and Jakub Vrána are all not offering surplus worth for his or her cap hits, which has clogged up the crew’s monetary flexibility to make adjustments. The big variety of gamers with some type of no-trade safety of their contracts has additionally value the crew the power to make significant adjustments to its roster.
That’s to not say all of the strikes for the reason that Stanley Cup win haven’t paid off, the Pavel Buchnevich commerce specifically was completely stellar, however total there have been fairly a number of missteps by way of participant recruitment and analysis for the reason that crew’s championship win.
So with a squad clearly in want of a change, however with out the means to make any vital participant strikes, the Blues discovered themselves in an identical predicament to the Edmonton Oilers from earlier this season.
Like in Edmonton, it’s unclear how a lot blame for his or her present struggles really lies within the palms of the top coach. But additionally like in Edmonton, the Blues didn’t have many levers to tug — outdoors of a training change — to attempt to catalyze team-wide enchancment.
The Oilers have responded extraordinarily positively to their teaching change, and have now gained eight straight video games. The Blues are seemingly hoping this transfer produces comparable outcomes, and it’s that determined want for enchancment that has led to St. Louis dispatching a determine who completed a lot for his or her franchise.
