St. Louis Blues

Without a doubt the only NHL team ever to be named after a song (“Saint Louis Blues” by W.C. Handy), the St. Louis Blues have been around since the post-Original Six 1967 expansion, though for some reason they still seem like Johnny-come-latelys to the league. They began life in the NHL with quite the bang, appearing in three straight Stanley Cup Finals in their first three seasons as an NHL team between 1967-1970, though it must be said that the league in those years was separated into two divisions between expansion teams and Original Six teams, so the Blues only needed to beat the other expansion teams to get to the Finals. The gap in quality showed, with the Blues swept twice in a row by the Montreal Canadiens and once by the Boston Bruins. For the next decade and a half, the team muddled on, occasionally missing the playoffs and never making it past the second round when they did, until in 1986 when they reached the Western Conference Finals and fought a tough seven-game series against a talented Calgary Flames team. The Blues won Game Six in overtime but In the end, the Flames prevailed, winning Game Seven by the slimmest of margins at 2-1. Brett Hull, son of the legendary Bobby Hull, joined the franchise in 1988, bringing goals and excitement to the Blues for a decade with his speed and ferocious shot. The team briefly acquired Wayne Gretzky as well, but the star was waning with age and squabbled with coach Mike Keenan, though he was hardly alone in that respect. Hull also fought with Keenan and moved to the Dallas Stars in 1998, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 1999. The Blues finally reached another Conference Finals in 2001, but the Colorado Avalanche proved tough opponents who would easily beat the Blues in five. More middling to bare years followed, including a six-year stretch where the Blues made the playoffs only once, but the team bounced back in 2016, winning two hotly-contested seven-games series against the Chicago Blackhawks and the Stars before falling in six to the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference Finals. The Blues went one better in 2019, besting the Sharks 4-2 in the Conference Finals this time for some sweet revenge served cold to set up a Stanley Cup Finals against the mighty Boston Bruins. The ghosts of 1970 were laid to rest, however, as the Blues defeated the Bruins in a dramatic seven-game Finals series to win the franchise’s first-ever Stanley Cup in 51 years of trying. The years since this heady triumph have seen the Blues tail off a bit, though, making fans in St. Louis wonder whether they are in for another lengthy wait for a championship or whether they will see their team add another trophy to their cabinet in the near future.