Some Perspective on the Blues Slow Start

Things are not well in Blues Nation.  The fans are restless, the players are frustrated and the owner is putting everyone on notice.  Some fans are calling for Murray’s head and there are whispers of some of the Blues youngsters being frustrated by Murray’s approach but the bottom line is that this team hasn’t been giving a consistent effort on the ice this season.

They’ll play good one game but then lay an egg the next, or the effort will be there for part of the game but by not playing a full 60 minutes, they still end up with the loss.  Where’s the effort?  Where’s the passion?  Where’s the tenacity, hunger and all out drive to win that we saw the second half of last season?  The players need to rally around and play for each other.  Owner Dave Checketts was right – the entire organization needs to be on the same page and it seems pretty clear that currently, they are not.  Checketts was also right in that no moves should be needed for things to turn around.  The current group of players and coaches should simply be doing better.  This likely isn’t a Stanley Cup contending team but this lineup should definitely be performing better than they are.  You don’t need to trade players or bring in a new coach to create change – the current pieces of the puzzle simply need to perform up to their capabilities.  Right now it seems just about everyone, players and coaches, are underperforming.  That needs to stop and it needs to stop now.

A simple solution would appear to be to fire Head Coach Andy Murray but that’s not nearly as plausible as it seems.  First off, he’s proven to be able to take a team and have them overachieve.  He deserves the benefit of the doubt here, at least for a while.  It would be way too soon to replace him at this point in the season.  The current Blues management team has shown to be a responsible, logic and rational group so I am confident they will not overreact and make rash decisions in this situation.  The other problem is that they just picked up Murray’s option on his contract for next season.  I highly doubt they would fire a guy just a little over a month after picking up the option on the last year of his contract.

The other way to shake up a team is through trade but that is also a problem.  First off, the team, at least on paper, should be doing better than they are but more importantly, it is extra hard to pull off trades of any magnitude this early in the season thanks to the salary cap.  Any GM will tell you that making a trade work both personnel-wise and money-wise this early in the season when most of a player’s salary is yet to be paid is near impossible. 

Where does that leave the Blues then?  Well, it leaves them in a bad, bad place if they don’t pick it up.  Perhaps instead of throwing band-aids at the problem via trade or personnel moves, the Blues should instead try to fix it internally by getting the current group working to fix the problem together.  Like Checketts said, this team from top to bottom needs to be on the same page.  What I see is a coach who tries so hard and prepares so much that he might just be putting undo pressure on some of his players.  One thing I have been thinking is that could the alleged miscommunication between Murray and some of his players be little more than a generational gap?  It seems to me that a lot of young adults, whether they been professional hockey players or working stiffs, work well in environments where there is a lot of praise.  Perhaps Murray needs to change his approach to some of the younger players. 

At the same time, some players likely need to man up a little and deal with things professionally instead of feeling down about the situation.  Hockey is a tough business.  For every player lucky enough to play in the NHL, there are hundreds who would love to be in that player’s shoes…or perhaps I should say skates.   It’s hard to maintain a level of excellence everyday but if a player is lucky enough to be making millions or at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to play a game and he cannot get himself properly motivated for each and every game, then perhaps he needs to look in the mirror. 

The bottom line is that the players need to play better and the coaching staff needs to make adjustments.  The effort was there Saturday night but the team ran into a good Sharks team and an outstanding performance by goaltender Evgeni Nabokov.  If that effort continues, this team should win more than they lose.  The players need to bring a consistent effort and the coaching staff likely needs to lighten up a little and try to loosen the guys up a little as it appears some of them are playing too tight. 

What the team needs to do is to concentrate on the fundamentals – get pucks on net, crash the net for rebounds, keep moving on the power play, forecheck aggressively, be responsible defensively – basically play as a team.  Here’s hoping they can come out with a strong effort, and a win, Thursday night against Phoenix.