Blues eliminated from postseason contention after loss to Carolina. ‘How can’t you be disappointed?’

The tiny cuts — shrewdly shredded and deftly diced across the first 80 games of the season — finally killed the Blues.

They accumulated in losses under two different head coaches. They added up despite some of the best goaltending in the league. They dotted an inconsistent transition season that turned out to be, well, almost exactly what the Blues organization thought it might be.

And with a 5-2 loss to Carolina on Friday night, combined with a Vegas win over Minnesota, the Blues were officially eliminated from postseason contention.

“How can’t you be disappointed?” Blues interim coach Drew Bannister said. “You start training camp in September. A lot of guys are here a lot earlier than that. Practices, games, travel, you battle through it to get to this point of the season and then it’s ripped away from you.

“We were a part of that. We have to take ownership in our game and it needs to be better, but certainly, we got ourselves in a position where we were fighting for the playoffs for the last two months. It’s tough when you’re in a grind and game to game means as much as it did.”

From about late February until the third period Friday night — when the Hurricanes scored three goals to break a 2-2 tie — the Blues were fighting the standings. They were punching up toward a playoff spot that they once owned by as many as four points Feb. 15. At certain moments, it seemed like the death knell was following.

When the club lost three in a row to Detroit, Winnipeg and Edmonton, the playoff dreams felt far away. Wins over Minnesota and Philadelphia helped steer back on track.

When they lost to the Islanders, Devils and Rangers around the trade deadline, hope appeared stuck in Pandora’s box. Of course, four consecutive wins followed to reinvigorate the Blues.

Losses to the Golden Knights and to the Sharks and to the Predators within the last fortnight were each destructive in their own way, but the Blues responded to each setback with a win in their next game.

Odds counted the Blues out for months, perhaps based on their overreliance on goaltending and special teams. But they didn’t do so themselves, and they were the last Western Conference team to miss the postseason cut.

“Us guys in here, no matter what the odds are or where we’re at in the season, we never gave up,” Blues forward Robert Thomas said. “We won’t give up. That’s what I’m taking away from this.”

Defenseman Colton Parayko: “I thought we’ve had a pretty good stretch here. I don’t know exactly what our record’s been, but we’ve definitely been playing well, I think. Maybe there’s a couple we would like to have back, but at the same time, we’ve been playing some good hockey and I think it’s good looking forward, we’ve got a good group in here. Just keep pushing all the way to the end a couple more games.”

Forward Brandon Saad: “It’s been an emotional month, month and a half here. It’s been fun hockey, a lot of competing. I think we grew a lot as a team. Obviously, a tough result here tonight.”

In missing the postseason, the Blues failed to qualify in consecutive seasons for the first time since 2009-10 and 2010-11. It is just the fourth time in franchise history that they have at least two straight seasons without a playoff berth. Only once has the team missed the playoffs three years in a row.

Of course, this season was somewhat expected by the Blues’ management and ownership.

Before the regular season, general manager Doug Armstrong set his goal, the potential best-case scenario at third place in the Central Division, or somewhere in the No. 11-15 range in the league standings. The Blues will finish in fifth place in the Central, and they currently rank 16th in the NHL.

It was all part of a two-track plan to plan for the future and ice a decent team in the NHL.

St. Louis competed for a playoff spot until game No. 80, while trying to develop young talent at various levels and to varying degrees. It slugged through a season with four win streaks of at least three games, and four losing streaks of at least three games.

“We’ve found ways to fight our way back into the playoff picture numerous times over the last two months,” Bannister said. “A lot of it was on us. There was times when we didn’t play good hockey and then consistently, we were able to get ourselves back into it. But I think if you want to be a playoff team, you have to consistently play good hockey through not only the whole year, but certainly when you come back after Christmas, when points are hard to get.”

Bannister pointed to the 6-8-1 stretch after the All-Star break as a key downturn. Of course, there’s also the 0-4-1 record against bottom-feeders San Jose and Columbus.

“You can pick apart the games that we lost,” Bannister said. “I’m sure there’s four or five games that we should have won, and that’s going to be a learning experience for us that we had opportunities. If we win four or five of those games, that’s just in the time that I was here. Over an 82-game schedule, all of a sudden, we’ve got 100 points and we’re in a solid playoff spot.”

Across a six-month season, only two games failed to matter for the Blues, a massive trim from a season ago but still too many for a franchise with a banner just five years ago. After a game Sunday against Seattle, and Wednesday in Dallas, the tiny cuts can begin to heal.

“I think it’s important for us to make sure that Sunday here, we take pride in our game and we put on a good performance for the fans that have supported us,” Bannister said.

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Joel Quenneville back to the NHL? Maybe with the Blues, for whom he is their winningest coach?

Quenneville, who went on to immense coaching success in the NHL after being fired by the Blues in 2004, currently is in limbo following his abrupt resignation from the Florida Panthers in 2021 after his role a scandal allegedly involving Chicago Blackhawks personnel while he was with the team came into question.

Kyle Beach, a Blackhawks prospect who was practicing with the team during its run to the Stanley Cup championship in 2010, reached a settlement three years ago in a lawsuit he had filed that alleged he had been sexually assaulted that season by an assistant coach. Terms of the agreement were confidential.

Quenneville had remained mostly mum publicly on the topic until addressing it with St. Louis hockey reporter Andy Strickland in the latest edition of “The Cam & Strick“ podcast he hosts with former Blue Cam Janssen. Strickland also is a member of Bally Sports Midwest’s Blues coverage team and host of a pucks-talk show on KFNS (590 AM) at 3 p.m. Fridays, and Janssen is a co-host of KFNS’ morning drive-time show.

The lengthy Quenneville conversation begins about an hour and 16 minutes into the more-than-two-hour podcast, which contains some R-rated commentary beforehand.

Quenneville won the Stanley Cup three times while in Chicago and has 969 coaching victories, trailing only Scotty Bowman’s 1,244 in NHL history. He was just beginning what would have been his third season with the Panthers when he resigned after being summoned to New York for a meeting with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who said at the time “all parties agreed that it was no longer appropriate that he continue to serve as Florida’s head coach.”

It was not a suspension, but Bettman said Quenneville “let the game down,” and before he could return to the league, he would have to have “a meeting in advance in order to determine the appropriate conditions under which such new employment might take place.”

Quenneville, 65, told Strickland he’d like to get back behind a bench.

“You’re always looking at opportunities,” he said. “I’m waiting for clearance to get that chance, to get back and coach. There’s people that will ask you, ‘Is there interest”’ or you’re thinking, ‘What are the possibilities of coming here? Are you interested?’ But there’s a process, too, before we can go to the next step. We’re still not there yet. ... There’s some places I would have loved to have gone.”

Strickland asked Quenneville if he thinks it’s fair that he’s not coaching now.

“Fair or whatever, depending on how you look at it, but I think that I deserve a chance to coach again,” he said. “... One day I think I’ve coached my last game and the next day I’m sitting there (thinking), ‘Geez, I’d like to get ahold of that team, it would be fun to work with.’”

He added that there are about 10 teams he’d be interested in, without naming any specifically, “so it’s pretty wide open.”

The incident

Brad Aldrich was the Blackhawks’ video coordinator when Beach allegedly was sexually assaulted in 2010. A report released by law firm Jenner & Block in October 2021 indicated the alleged incident was covered up by team management “in light of the need to protect team chemistry and avoid bad publicity during the ongoing playoffs. What is clear is that, after being informed of Aldrich’s alleged sexual harassment and misconduct with a player, no action was taken for three weeks.”

The report also said Stan Bowman, the team’s general manager at the time, “recalled that, after learning of the incident, Quenneville shook his head and said that it was hard for the team to get to where they were, and they could not deal with this issue now.”

The Blackhawks were fined $2 million by the NHL when the situation came to a head in 2021 for what the league said was “the organization’s inadequate internal procedures and insufficient and untimely response.”

Quenneville told Strickland he could have handled things another way.

“I’m not blaming anybody. I blame myself for some things I could have and should have done differently,” he said. “I didn’t put it all together that it resembled sexual abuse or sexual assault by not asking more questions. And I take ownership on that. I think that had I known more, I think I could’ve — I would’ve handled it completely different.”

Quenneville also said he “had a name” for the club’s upper management.

“I called them ‘the firm.’ Not in a derogatory way at all. But just the way they did business. It was a matter of fact, you know, legal, business-like law firm. And that’s basically what it was. You knew your job and job description. You knew your role. You knew to stay in your lane. And you knew who the boss or bosses were.”

He also added, “What I learned over this process is I definitely didn’t handle it properly.”

The background

Strickland has known Quenneville since he began covering the Blues in the 1999-2000 season and said he has followed the allegations closely since the story surfaced in 2021.

“Considering I knew Joel, I took on an even greater interest,” Strickland told the Post-Dispatch. “... I’m pretty sure he knew that if and when he was ready to talk, I would like to interview him. But I wasn’t routinely asking for an interview.”

The conversation took place last week while Quenneville was in town for former Blue Kelly Chase’s event to raise money to fight cancer.

“I think he felt like this was the right time to speak publicly for the first time,” Strickland said. “It has been three years, and I know those around him were encouraging him to tell his story.”

Strickland said he does not think that Quenneville doing the interview with a St. Louis reporter, while in St. Louis, was a calculated move to gauge the mood for a possible return to the Blues.

“Not at all,” Strickland said. “If I was based in any other city, I think I still would have conducted the interview. It worked out perfectly in that he was coming to (Chase’s) event, which allowed us to do it in person. Otherwise, we would have done the interview remotely.”

Quenneville took over as the Blues’ coach for 40 games in the 1996-97 season and compiled a record of 307-191-77 with them before being fired in 2004. His team-high 307 victories are 59 more than the runner-up, Ken Hitchcock.

The team currently has an interim coach, Drew Bannister, who has been at the helm since Craig Berube was fired in December, and Strickland thinks Quenneville would be happy to go to many NHL teams.

“I honestly think he just wants the opportunity to get back in the game and be a head coach,” Strickland said. “I think he’s earned the right to choose the best fit for him, but I would think he’d be interested in coaching a team that was ready to win and could compete.”

Strickland was pleased with the interview.

“I think he came across very sincere and believable,” he said. “Others who were in the room for the one and only meeting have confirmed what he says took place in the meeting. I think he summarized the dynamic of the Blackhawks infrastructure pretty well. I’ve spoken to dozens of hockey people since the episode was released, I haven’t had anyone tell me otherwise.”

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Blues defenseman Torey Krug missed his third game of the season on Friday night when he was out vs. Carolina due to an upper-body injury.

Krug was hurt initially on Wednesday night against Chicago and did not play the third period against the Blackhawks. He also did not participate in an optional practice on Thursday morning, nor during the morning skate on Friday.

Blues interim coach Drew Bannister did not rule Krug out for Sunday afternoon’s game against Seattle.

“Just out for today, and we’ll see how he feels tomorrow and that’ll dictate,” Bannister said. “Obviously with the early game on Sunday, it’ll be important for him to be feeling well enough to play in that game. Hopefully, he can get on the ice and skate with us tomorrow afternoon.”

Krug previously missed a game in Ottawa with a lower-body injury, and he was a healthy scratch in San Jose last week.

As for forward Jake Neighbours, he has not played since he was hit by San Jose’s Luke Kunin on Saturday, when the back of his head appeared to hit the top of the boards in front of the Blues bench. Neighbours skated on Wednesday morning, but has not been on the ice with the team since then.

Can the Blues rule him out for the rest of the regular season?

“I don’t want to go that far, but we’re leaning more towards (that),” Bannister said. “Just with the timeline, a 12 o’clock game on Sunday, it’s a lot to ask a player coming off an injury to skate once, if he skates tomorrow. Obviously, if he doesn’t skate tomorrow, he will not be available to us. It’s still a big ask for a player, skating once and trying to get into a noon game.”

Friday night was the first time all season that the Blues were missing four players due to injury: Krug, Neighbours, Justin Faulk (upper-body, week-to-week) and Oskar Sundqvist (torn ACL, out for the season).

Without Krug unavailable, Marco Scandella drew back into the lineup on the third pair with Tyler Tucker. Nick Leddy ran the point on the second power play unit, as Scott Perunovich was up top for the No. 1 unit.

Springfield in trouble

AHL affiliate Springfield entered Friday needing a big finish in order to qualify for the playoffs in the Atlantic Division. The Thunderbirds were four points back of Lehigh Valley with five games remaining, beginning with Friday’s game at Hartford.

Springfield also plays against Charlotte on Saturday and Providence on Sunday. It entered Friday having lost four games in a row and in seventh place in the eight-team Atlantic Division. The top six teams qualify for the postseason.

The Thunderbirds’ fade down the stretch can partially be attributed to personnel.

Zack Bolduc and Zach Dean are with St. Louis in the NHL. So is Matthew Kessel, who began the season as a top-pair defenseman in the AHL. Nathan Walker has spent the last few months in the NHL, away from his top-line role in Springfield. Even the team’s starting goaltender at the beginning of the season (Malcolm Subban) was traded to Columbus.

Adam Gaudette leads the AHL with 40 goals and is tied for third in the league with 64 points. His next-closest teammate is Matthew Peca with 41 points in 48 games.

Armstrong appoints staff

On Friday morning, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong announced his staff at Hockey Canada for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off in February. Boston GM Don Sweeney will serve as general manager for the tournament, with Dallas GM Jim Nill serving as associate GM.

Armstrong will oversee Canada’s management for the tournament before taking over as the general manager for the 2026 Olympics.

Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington, defenseman Colton Parayko, and forwards Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas figure to be candidates for the 4 Nations Face-Off. Kyrou and Thomas are eligible for that tournament, but have not been cleared for the Olympics since they were on the 2018 World Juniors team for Canada that has been in the middle of a sexual assault investigation.

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Oftentimes, when the Blues talk about Jordan Kyrou, the chatter can revolve around a single word, characteristic, attribute: competitiveness.

Sometimes, it’s the lack of. Or the arrival of. Right now, as Kyrou has rallied with 15 points in his past 10 games, it’s about the consistency of his competitiveness.

“I think just my compete away from the puck, winning battles and competing hard, skating hard without the puck,” Kyrou said after scoring two goals in a 5-2 Blues win over the Blackhawks on Wednesday night. “The rest kind of just happens.”

Kyrou scored twice on the rush in the opening three minutes to run his total to 29 goals this season, a number that leads the Blues even in a down year for the speedy winger. He is one of five Blues that have scored at least 25 goals this season, including Pavel Buchnevich, Jake Neighbours, Brandon Saad and Robert Thomas.

In the NHL, only the Stars have more such players. In Blues history, only the 1981-82 team (Blake Dunlop, Bernie Federko, Joe Mullen, Jorgen Pettersson, Brian Sutter and Perry Turnbull) have more.

“He’s getting opportunities; he’s scoring,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “Obviously, when guys like that with high-end skill, when they’re feeling confident and feeling good, the puck seems to find them. When you got opportunities like that, he’s scoring.”

Blues interim coach Drew Bannister: “He’s shooting the puck really well. He’s finding a lot of space out there. He’s using his speed. I thought it was a good game for him, but I think overall, over the last three or four games, he’s been real competitive. Obviously, he’s feeling confident in his game right now.”

Kyrou’s push kicked up with a three-point performance in Ottawa, and he followed that up with a hat trick on the road in Minnesota. He had assists against Vegas and Calgary. On the road, he scored late-game goals in Nashville and San Jose, then dished out three helpers as the Blues beat the Ducks.

On Wednesday night, Kyrou scored on a breakaway and a two-on-one to jump-start the Blues as they scored on the first four shots they put on goal.

“It’s awesome,” Kyrou said. “The fans here are so loud, and we love scoring for them and getting them going like that. It’s great. Great momentum, for sure.”

The counting numbers will say that Kyrou took a step back this season.

He likely won’t hit the 37 goals he scored last season. He likely won’t get to the 73 points he put up a year ago. Even with his current hot streak, Kyrou won’t duplicate the production of years past.

But this season was about building a more complete Kyrou. As the Blues shut down a losing season last year, the message to Kyrou was clear: become more of a factor when goals aren’t going in; become harder on pucks; become more defensively responsible; become a positive impact on the ice.

It hasn’t always been a straight line this season for Kyrou.

For comments after Craig Berube was fired in December, Kyrou was booed by his own fans at home. For lackluster play in a loss in Detroit, Kyrou was benched in the third period by Bannister. At times, Bannister slashed Kyrou’s ice time by shifting him down the lineup and taking him off the top power-play unit.

But in the aggregate, Kyrou has submitted a better overall season than last year. While some will cling to his minus-10 rating, Kyrou has helped the Blues outscore teams 55-48 when he’s on the ice at five on five. Relative to when Kyrou’s off the ice at five on five, the Blues control 6.98% more shot attempts, 7.81% more shots on goal, 7.67% more scoring chances and 7.31% more expected goals than their opponents, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Kyrou, in short, has made the Blues a better team when he’s been on the ice, even with the imperfections in his game that exist.

“Competitiveness and using his speed to his advantage, especially using the wide ice to create space for himself,” Bannister said. “I think when he gets himself into trouble, a lot of times, he’s bringing the puck into ice where he’s going to get checked.

“I think he’s been doing a better job as of late finding more ice on the outside a little bit and giving himself a little time, letting his linemates catch up in the play so he can spend more time in the offensive zone.”

The Blues should welcome this type of surge to finish the season from Kyrou. Part of the reason they are orchestrating a retool instead of a rip-it-down-and-tank rebuild is because both Kyrou and Thomas are locked up on matching deals for seven more years at a $8.125 million cap hit.

Thomas has shown he’s capable of handling the duties of a No. 1 center. St. Louis could use Kyrou joining him along a similar trajectory on the wing.

“I think for me, it’s always been like this the past couple years,” Kyrou said. “I find when my game’s not going well, I’ve got to go back to basics and keep it simple and play strong without the puck, and then everything with the puck happens.”

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As the Blues’ regular season winds down, the injuries are piling up.

Blues forward Jake Neighbours will miss his third game Friday night due to an upper-body injury suffered Saturday in San Jose, and St. Louis could also be without defenseman Torey Krug against the Hurricanes. Krug left Wednesday’s game against Chicago with an upper-body injury after the second period.

Neither Neighbours nor Krug were on the ice for optional Blues practice Thursday morning. Defenseman Justin Faulk (upper body) has already been labeled week to week and is likely out for the remainder of the regular season.

Neighbours was hurt by a hit from Sharks forward Luke Kunin on Saturday, when it appeared that the back of Neighbours’ head hit the top of the boards in front of the Blues bench. Neighbours skated during Blues morning skate Wednesday but was absent a day later, and Blues interim coach Drew Bannister said he would not play against Carolina.

“Yesterday with his skate, he wasn’t feeling the way we were hoping he would feel,” Bannister said. “Today was just keep him off the ice and give him an extra day’s rest.”

Krug’s status for Friday, meanwhile, was unknown. Bannister said he was day to day.

“I don’t want to rule him out or say that he is playing (Friday),” Bannister said. “We’ll just evaluate him. He didn’t go on the ice (Thursday). It was an optional day, so that wouldn’t be unusual for him not to go on the ice. We’ll see how he feels (Friday), and then we’ll make a call on that.”

If Krug is unable to play, that would likely mean Marco Scandella would draw back into the Blues lineup for just the fourth time since March 9.

All season, the Blues have been one of the healthiest teams in the league, as through the first 69 games of the season, only Faulk (17 games), Scott Perunovich (seven), Kasperi Kapanen (seven) and Pavel Buchnevich (one) were the only Blues to miss time injured.

Since then, Oskar Sundqvist (torn ACL), Krug, Faulk and Neighbours have all been injured.

Making an impression

In a game that lacked much after the opening four-goal onslaught in the first seven minutes, Blues defenseman Tyler Tucker provided a punch Wednesday when he leveled Blackhawks rookie Connor Bedard along the boards. After the hit, Tucker dropped the gloves and wrestled Chicago’s Alex Vlasic to the ice.

Both Tucker and Vlasic were called for roughing.

“It wasn’t the most intense game, I would say, but (Tucker) played very hard,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “He made big hits. He finished his checks. Obviously got in a little scrum there. That’s a guy that’s trying to prove himself, and he played extremely well.”

Overall, the Blues held Bedard to two shots on goal and four shot attempts in his 19:52 of ice time. According to the NHL, Bedard was hit twice Wednesday: once by Tucker and another by Alexey Toropchenko.

“He had that one finish on him, but other guys were finishing hard on him,” Bannister said of Tucker. “Getting their bumps and not going out of their way, just making sure that we knew he was out on the ice, and we made it tougher on him.

“He’s a young, skilled hockey player that’s very good. If you’re going to give him time and space, he can hurt you. For Tucks, I think he’s played extremely well for us in the games that he’s been in. Last night was no different; I thought he played very well.”

Getting chippy

Blues forward Nikita Alexandrov lost a piece of his front tooth Wednesday night when he was inadvertently hit in the mouth by a puck flipped by teammate Nathan Walker after an icing call. Alexandrov left the ice briefly with a bloody mouth but returned without needing stitches.

Alexandrov said Thursday it was a fortunate bounce that he got hit in that particular tooth, which was a crown. He’d previously lost that same tooth playing junior hockey for Charlottetown in the QMJHL, so replacing it now should be easier — and less painful than if it were real.

Walker, who sits next to Alexandrov in the dressing room at Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights, said the puck just exploded off his stick and joked that he was working on his accuracy by hitting Alexandrov’s crown instead of another tooth.

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Post-Dispatch Blues beat reporter Matthew DeFranks joined columnist Jeff Gordon to discuss the progress Zack Bolduc and other young Blues are making with increased playing time.

With three games remaining, Blues still have a heartbeat after beating Blackhawks

With a 5-2 win over the Blackhawks on Wednesday night, St. Louis staved off elimination until at least Friday, when it will play in Game No. 80 still with a chance — albeit long — to qualify for the Western Conference playoffs.

Blues forward Kevin Hayes a healthy scratch again as regular season comes to a close

Hayes was also a scratch on Saturday in San Jose but returned on Sunday in Anaheim.

Blues defenseman Justin Faulk likely out for rest of regular season with upper-body injury

Blues interim coach Drew Bannister said Faulk was week-to-week with an upper-body injury suffered in a fight with San Jose’s Luke Kunin on Saturday afternoon.

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