ST. LOUIS — Ken Hitchcock and David Backes know the deal. When you lose, things can’t stay the same.
That theme references a lot of elements here in St. Louis, where the only Round 1 matchup between two Top 5 NHL clubs opens Wednesday night.
In the big picture, it means that Hitchcock — who is on another in a series of one-year contracts — likely needs a couple of series wins to remain employed here. Same with Backes, a pending unrestricted free agent who wasn’t re-upped this season for a reason.
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Backes has taken these Blues into the playoffs on five separate occasions, yet he has reached the second round only once.
So, why is this Blues team ready to do what so many former Blues teams have been unable to accomplish?
“We’re as prepared as we’ve ever been, we’ve got as much talent as we’ve ever had, and we’ve been tested through some tough times more than we’ve ever been tested. I see the stars aligning,” said Backes on the morning of Game 1.
Over in the Chicago Blackhawks dressing room, no one is talking about a changed team, or the strength that comes with overcoming adversity. Why? Because Chicago has won the Stanley Cup three of the past six seasons, and that gives them — as Hitchcock calls it — “the knowledge.”
The Blackhawks — who will be without defenceman Duncan Keith (suspended) in Game 1 — own the knowledge the Blues are trying to accrue. So, since the past few springs have given St. Louis plenty of intel on what doesn’t work, they’re hoping an injury-plagued season has them filled up on the type of smarts that can knock out the champs.
“Adversity could have broken us, but it created a spirit,” said Hitchcock, who has the fourth-most wins (757) in NHL history. “We couldn’t have drawn a tougher opponent, but the feeling in the locker room is we’ve overcome so much this year that this is another obstacle. The adversity has created a bond in the dressing room that’s pretty strong and we want to test it out.”
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Backes was crooning the same tune, a theme that both men believe but also one they want to permeate the belief systems of every player wearing blue and gold tonight.
“We’ve had to bind together through some adversity and from that we have probably the closest group I’ve been a part of,” said Backes, who will captain a completely healthy Blues team in Game 1, for the first time all season long. “When a guy goes down someone’s taking his spot. When a play isn’t made, someone’s picking him up. A penalty is taken, we’re killing it off. When all else fails, we’ve had great goaltending.
“That’s a different feeling in here than we’ve had in the past. We didn’t know what the reaction would be when something hit the fan, or didn’t go right.”
If the Cubs can bean the Cardinals in the Major League Baseball playoffs, as occurred last fall, then maybe the little brothers from St. Louis can finally beat the Blackhawks. It seems like they’ve played each other annually, but in fact the only Blues-Blackhawks meeting in the past several springs came in 2014, when four of the six games were settled in overtime. Of course, Chicago moved on.
It was another in a franchise-long list of disappointments for the team that’s made the most playoff appearances among the original 1967 expansion clubs (40), but has never won a Cup. A little history:
In the first three years after the NHL’s original expansion — when the Original Six were grouped in the East Division and Sad Sack Six (St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Oakland, Los Angeles) were lumped in the West Division — St. Louis went to three straight Stanley Cup Finals.
Of course, the Scotty Bowman-coached Blues didn’t win a single game over three years in sweeps by Montreal (’68 and ’69) and Boston in 1970. And they haven’t been back to a final since, reaching the Conference Final just once since the 1986-87 season.
They simply haven’t won. Not in the Glenn Hall years, not in the Bernie Federko years, not in the Brett Hull and Adam Oates years, not in the Curtis Joseph or Dougie Gilmour years, and surely not in the David Backes, Alex Pietrangelo years.
They are as sick of hearing about it as we media types are of asking.
“Fans will be fans. The media will be media and critics will be critics. Haters will be haters,” winger Ryan Reaves said. “That’s how the world goes. When you have a history like we have in the last couple of years, everybody is going to look at it and say, ‘Here we go again.’
“As long as that’s not the mindset in this dressing room, we’re going to be OK. We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that’s not what happens again.”
