First of all congratulations to the St. Louis Blues on winning the Stanley Cup. I'm sure that the long wait combined with the fact that it was the Bruins that they beat, has to make it all that much sweeter. The years of torment having to see the images of Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring the Cup winning goal in St. Louis in 1970, replaced with their own Game 7 heroics in Boston.
We have heard that in order to win the Stanley a team needs a top tier goalie that has been there before. They also need that superstar who is able to carry the team when nothing else seems to be going. A proven head coach that knows the grind of the playoff grind and how to prepare his team and knows when to apply the gas and how to manage his team through the roller coaster ride due to experience. Then hone ice advantage becomes the next hot topic as that is needed as well if one is going to win the Stanley Cup.
Many of those myths that the Blues dispelled have been proven wrong in the past of course as well. The point is that many believe that certain teams are far away from contending because they do not possess some or all of these characteristics.
That is simply not the case and we do not need to dig back into history to see that. The Blues just proved it. They have been a solid team for many years. They finally got the goaltending from an unlikely source in Jordan Binnington and rock solid coaching from Craig Berube.
We can not discount the additions of Ryan O'Reilly, Tyler Bozak, Patrick Maroon, and the return format third tour of duty David Perron among others that made the Blues a much deeper team in the process.
That said it still came down to the man between the pipes and the guy behind the bench that pulled this group together and pushed them over the top.
I have asked it here many times before and the question just keeps getting more pronounced Are the Wild really all that far off?
The offseason is officially here and Paul Fenton is on the job making the Wild a better team. What did he learn from the playoffs that may have altered his plans and opened his eyes as to what he really needs to make the Wild a contender in 2020.
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