How lessons from 2019 have impacted the Blues’ strategy this season
Doug Armstrong is in his 12th year running the St. Louis Blues, making him the second-longest-tenured general manager in the NHL. While he’s not sure what to make of his team this season, he knows one thing.
“I’ve never been part of a group that’s had such a diversity in play and results,” Armstrong told ESPN over the weekend. “Our peaks are high and our valleys are low. And we get to both quickly.”
The Blues have had a dramatic start to the season. A franchise-record eight-game losing streak was followed by a seven-game winning streak.
Along the way, the Blues demonstrated some bad habits, like allowing a one-goal deficit to quickly become two or three. They’ve also engineered incredible comebacks, like Saturday; down 4-1 entering the third period, St. Louis stunned Florida with an overtime win.
“I know what our identity has been in the past and I don’t think this team has an identity yet,” Armstrong said. “That’s one of the struggles our coaches are having right now. You’re a quarter into the season and you still haven’t found anything you can hang your hat on and say, ‘This is what a good game looks like.'”
With an average age of over 28, the Blues have the eighth-oldest roster in the NHL. And they’ll face big decisions soon: The two highest-paid players (captain Ryan O’Reilly and winger Vladimir Tarasenko, with matching $7.5 million cap hits) both become unrestricted free agents this summer.
But for now, Armstrong is exercising patience — despite his team hovering around .500 in a competitive Central Division. With tenure comes perspective, and Armstrong knows how to weather a storm. In a wide-ranging conversation, the Blues GM explained why seismic moves this season are unlikely — and a rebuild isn’t in the team’s plans anytime soon.
The quarter mark is too early to panic
Rewind to the Blues’ 2019 Stanley Cup season. In January, the Blues had the worst record in the league and had already undergone a coaching change, replacing Mike Yeo with Craig Berube. The team had made several big free agent acquisitions the previous summer: O’Reilly, Tyler Bozak, Pat Maroon, David Perron.
“A lot of pundits thought we were a solid team, a Cup-contending team, but we weren’t playing like it,” Armstrong said. “We wanted to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Good players have bad years. I learned that early in my career from Bob Gainey. If a player is going to have a 12- or 16-year career, they’re not all going to be memorable. You don’t want to make a mistake out of frustration.”
On a Western Conference road trip just before Christmas, a shift began. “We didn’t win the games, but we started to play really well,” Armstrong recalled. “It didn’t look like we had turned the corner, but inside it felt like we were turning the corner. In January, Jordan Binnington came in and a storybook season was had after that.”
Most of the noise is just that — just noise
Every player on the Blues has seemingly seen their name come up in trade rumors, including the captain, O’Reilly. Armstrong laughs and says he has learned to live with the white noise.
“People just make up things that they think would work because they want to play GM,” Armstrong said. “I’m not sure how many trades that get made up actually come to fruition. You know the people have a job to do — whether it’s every day on TV or radio or on Saturday nights. That’s just where we’re at as a society, and we as managers, players and owners have to understand it.”
When asked specifically about O’Reilly, Armstrong said: “At the end of the day, he’s a good player and he’s been a good player for a long time for us. If I say we want to get better in incremental ways over the next month or two, he has to be a big part of that.”
The trade market isn’t actually that robust
“I don’t even know the last time there was a shake-up trade,” Armstrong said. “Not in season. And in the offseason — to me, those are contract-forced trades or shifting-direction trades. Not ‘I want to get people’s attention’ trades.”
Since the Blues won the Cup four years ago, roughly two-thirds of the general managers in the league are new at their posts. Unfamiliarity makes it less likely to commit to a franchise-altering trades, Armstrong said. There’s also an aspect of risk aversion.
“I think it’s easy for managers, myself included, to say, ‘Well the salary cap makes it hard to trade,'” Armstrong said. “I actually just don’t think there’s an appetite to make those trades like there were in the past. It’s become a seasonal industry where you make your trade at the trade deadline and at the draft. You’re always talking to teams, but it seems like it’s more talk and less action.”
The Blues don’t have an appetite for a retool or rebuild
“We all have a different definition of what a retool, rebuild or re-whatever means, but it really just means you’re taking a step back,” Armstrong said. “To me, taking a step back to take two forward, I have a vision for how that would look. But taking eight steps back and trying to pick in the top five for the better part of five or six years, those things sound great in July but they’re not a lot of fun in January. And if you do that year in and year out, it takes a special market to be able to sustain a revenue and keep fans wanting to come out and see that team. Look at teams that have done it — their attendance has dropped significantly. When they come back, they’ll probably have great attendance again, but it’s still a business at the end of the day and we still have to put a product on the ice that can sell tickets.”
Armstrong is proud of the team he built and wants to see his vision through. And there’s one specific reason why he thinks the Blues can stave off a rebuild: drafting Jordan Kyrou in the second round (2016) and Robert Thomas at No. 20 of the first round (2017).
“Those are both point-per-game players. If you redrafted those guys, they’re probably both in the top 10,” Armstrong said. “So in my mind, we went through a rebuild without having to do it because our amateur scouting staff did a good job of getting us competitive players. If we had picked normal players that go in that area, instead of point-per-game players, you’ve got players that you’re trying to get into the league.”
Kyrou is 24. Thomas is 23. They are both signed to extensions with a $8.125 million cap hit that kicks in next season.
“Because we have these building blocks moving forward, we can keep our veterans together and push with the top teams,” Armstrong said. “So I don’t think a rebuild for us is going to look like it has for other teams. If you look just at those two players, they’re too good to let us go to last place consistently.”
Parity reigns now more than ever
“The teams that are rebuilding are getting better quicker than the teams that have been good are getting bad,” Armstrong said. “So we have everybody meeting in the middle.”
The style of play has also changed, leading to even more unpredictability. “Now no lead is safe because defending has taken a secondary thought process for most teams,” he said. “They play offense — and offense is great when you score, but it creates offense for the other team when you don’t. It’s an entertaining style of hockey, but it creates such a variance day to day and team to team.”
And that also has created crowded standings.
“Boston and New Jersey are the outliers at the top,” Armstrong said. “Other than that, you have five or six over [.500], and four or five under [.500] for 26 teams. Having new teams sprout up is good because we’re in an entertainment business. And that’s the beauty of the cap system. Every organization, every owner, every fan base believes that they should be competitive. But the reality is that half the teams aren’t going to make the playoffs, and three-fourths of the teams will be done within two weeks of the playoffs.”
The Blues are committed to consistency behind the bench
Craig Berube was signed to a three-year extension in February 2022. That belief hasn’t wavered. After the Blues lost five in a row earlier in the month, Armstrong decided to handle media availability himself — and give the players and coaches the day off. And during that session, the GM reaffirmed his coaches’ security.
“At that time we weren’t playing well, and usually calling for a coaching change is the lowest hanging fruit,” Armstrong said. “None of us are immune. Craig took this job, I took this job, and every day we wake up, we’re one day closer to getting fired. That’s just the nature of the beast of our profession, and we accept that. But that’s not something we would take lightly.
“I thought it was beneficial for myself to get that out there because we had lost five. If we lost another game or two, I knew that would be the narrative. I figured if we squashed the narrative before it started, we didn’t have to deal with it. But also … Craig is a good coach. Like O’Reilly, it’s incumbent on him to get us out of this too.”
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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama blew a 28-point lead against No. 2 Georgia at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday night.
And then the No. 4 Crimson Tide broke the Bulldogs’ hearts again in a 41-34 victory in which the SEC heavyweights scored touchdowns on consecutive plays from scrimmage late in the fourth quarter.
Alabama didn’t seal the victory until cornerback Zabien Brown intercepted quarterback Carson Beck‘s pass to receiver Colbie Young in the end zone with 43 seconds left to end Georgia’s furious rally.
After the Bulldogs rallied from a 23-point deficit at halftime, they took their first lead on Beck’s 67-yard touchdown to Dillon Bell to make it 34-33 with 2:31 to go.
But Alabama scored on its very next play from scrimmage. On first-and-10 from the Crimson Tide 25, quarterback Jalen Milroe threw a deep ball down the right sideline for freshman Ryan Williams. The receiver spun out of cornerback Julian Humphrey‘s tackle at the 8-yard line and beat safety KJ Bolden for a 75-yard touchdown with 2:18 remaining. Milroe threw a 2-point conversion to receiver Germie Bernard to give Alabama a 41-34 lead.
Milroe completed 27 of 33 passes for 374 yards with two touchdowns and ran for 117 yards with two scores. He is the first player in FBS history with 300 passing yards, 100 rushing yards and 2 rushing touchdowns against an AP top-five opponent, according to ESPN Research.
Williams, a 17-year-old freshman, had six catches for 177 yards with one score.
Beck recovered from a slow start to complete 27 of 50 passes for 439 yards with three touchdowns and three interceptions. He also lost a fumble and was sacked three times.
The loss ended Georgia’s 42-game winning streak in the regular season, which was the longest run by an FBS team since Oklahoma won 45 in a row from 1953 to 1957. It also snapped Georgia’s 16-game winning streak on the road.
It was new Tide coach Kalen DeBoer’s first meeting with Georgia, but the results were the same for Alabama. It has won nine of its past 10 games against Georgia, including a 27-24 victory in last year’s SEC championship game, which led to the Bulldogs failing to make the College Football Playoff.
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Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — No. 1 Texas got its first SEC win behind the arm of Arch Manning, who helped the Longhorns overcome a slow start and some self-inflicted setbacks to beat Mississippi State 35-13 on Saturday.
Manning was 26-of-31 for 324 yards and two touchdowns and added 33 rushing yards and another score, despite Johntay Cook II dropping a wide-open touchdown pass that would’ve added another 62 passing yards in the second quarter. A week after throwing two interceptions in his first start against UL Monroe, Manning said he felt more relaxed.
“I think last week I didn’t have as much fun as I wanted to,” Manning said. “I think I had a little bit more fun today even though it was a little rocky.”
It was rocky because running back Jaydon Blue lost two fumbles — one in the red zone — Cook dropped a touchdown and there were eight penalties on the Texas offense. Coach Steve Sarkisian criticized himself for kicking a field goal, then going for it on fourth down after a defensive penalty gave the Longhorns another chance. Texas failed to convert, taking three points off the board.
The Longhorns went into halftime with a 14-6 lead, with Mississippi State running a ground-heavy approach behind true freshman quarterback Michael Van Buren Jr. The Bulldogs ran 73 plays on the night to Texas’ 62, but the Longhorns outgained them 522 yards to 294. There were also 17 penalties in the game, many with lengthy reviews.
“It was hard for the game to get a rhythm to it,” Sarkisian said.
But he was pleased that the Longhorns navigated this stretch of the season and Quinn Ewers‘ injury to start 5-0. It’s the second straight season Texas has started 5-0, marking just the second time in the past 50 years the Longhorns have done it in back-to-back years. Texas has an off week coming up, followed by the Red River Rivalry in Dallas against Oklahoma, before Georgia comes to Austin the following week.
Sarkisian said the Longhorns showed poise, and he was pleased they were able to survive their first SEC challenge while letting Ewers recover from a strained oblique injury without having to rush him back.
“We need Quinn back because he’s our quarterback and he’s our leader,” Sarkisian said. “I think that impacts the entire team and belief, but what I think we learned and what Arch learned here over the last 2½ games is this team can count on him too.”
Manning said he’s ready for Ewers’ return whenever that might be.
“I think Quinn’s proved himself,” Manning said. “I mean, he led us to the Sugar Bowl last year and he’s played really well this year, so this is his team. I think he’s going to come back and play really well, but I’ll be ready for when my number’s called if they need me. So we’re just going to try and keep this thing rolling.”
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Max Olson, ESPN Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS — UNLV made a statement Saturday in its first game without former starting quarterback Matthew Sluka: The Rebels are going to be just fine.
Rolling to a dominant 59-14 win over Fresno State and moving to 4-0, UNLV proved it will be a contender in the Mountain West Conference race regardless of its quarterback change.
Hajj-Malik Williams threw for 182 yards, rushed for 119 yards and accounted for four total touchdowns in his first start for the Rebels after Sluka opted to leave the program Wednesday over a dispute about his NIL compensation.
“It was business as usual,” UNLV coach Barry Odom said. “We’ve got a very mature team. … Our players, we’ve got strong leadership. They understand the mission that we’re on and they got it done.”
Williams, a sixth-year senior and FCS transfer from Campbell, joined the Rebels in January and lost a close competition with Sluka in fall camp. The 24-year-old quarterback played in 41 games at Campbell, leaving as the program’s career leader in passing yards and touchdowns, and was ready for his opportunity.
“I thought he was effective, I thought he was efficient,” Odom said. “I thought the offensive line did a tremendous job protecting him. I thought the receivers ran great routes. I thought the runners ran hard. We played well as an offense.”
UNLV wide receiver Ricky White III led the Rebels with a season-high 10 catches for 127 yards and two touchdowns and said the quarterback change was “definitely good for us.”
“He’s just a great quarterback that us, as an offense, we can rally behind and just go by his pace,” White said.
After starting three games for UNLV, Sluka opted to redshirt and was expected to enter the transfer portal in December. Sluka’s father and agent have alleged he was verbally promised $100,000 by UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion during his recruitment but received only $3,000 from the school’s NIL collective. UNLV said in a statement that Sluka’s representatives made financial demands for him to keep playing that it interpreted as “a violation of NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law.”
Odom read from a prepared statement during his postgame news conference and did not take questions regarding Sluka. He said UNLV complied with applicable rules and was committed to the development and success of every player in the program.
“Many have expressed very strong opinions about the events of last week without full knowledge of the facts, without full knowledge of the events of last week and without full knowledge of the rules in the ever-changing, evolving NIL system,” Odom said. “And regrettably, some have even used this circumstance as a platform for their own agendas. I respect everyone’s right to an opinion, and I won’t comment on others’ opinions or their motivations for expressing them.”
White also had a message for Circa Sports CEO Derek Stevens after the Vegas casino expressed interest in offering $100,000 to keep Sluka on the team, telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal that doing so would be worth it “to keep the Rebels’ playoff hopes alive.”
“I would ask that somebody reach out to the Circa CEO and ask him, with that $100,000 that he wanted to donate, give it to our O-line please,” White said.
The Rebels ended a six-game losing streak against Fresno State and achieved the program’s first 4-0 start since 1976 with a strong day in all three phases of the game. Their defense produced four interceptions and four sacks while giving up only 30 rushing yards, and their special teams delivered a blocked punt that White returned for a touchdown in the first quarter plus a 90-yard kickoff return touchdown by Jai’Den Thomas in the fourth quarter.
The victory kept UNLV in the race for the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff and concluded a chaotic week for an athletic department that was simultaneously dealing with the latest round of conference realignment in college athletics.
UNLV officially decided to remain in the Mountain West on Thursday, turning down a move to the Pac-12 following that league’s addition of Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State for 2026. The seven remaining schools in the Mountain West agreed to a grant of rights that will bind them to the conference through 2031-32.
After already defeating Big 12 members Houston and Kansas in nonconference play, UNLV gets one more opportunity to take down a Power 4 opponent and strengthen its CFP résumé when it hosts 3-1 Syracuse on Friday.
“Our guys will flip the page really quickly,” Odom said. “I could tell in the locker room we’re ready to do that and get on to the next game.”
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