St. Louis Blues Reach Stanley Cup Finals For 1st Time Since 1970

The St. Louis Blues defeated the San Jose Sharks 5-1 in Game 6 of the NHL Western Conference Final to advance to their first Stanley Cup since 1970. The Blues will face the Boston Bruins, the very same team they faced nearly 50 years ago.

The Blues are one of the most enigmatic teams in professional sports. A part of the NHL expansion era, the Blues reached the Stanley Cup Finals in their first three seasons under the stewardship of a young Scotty Bowman, but never won a single Stanley Cup game being swept by the Montreal Canadiens in both 1968 and 1969 and by the Bruins in 1970. The latter ended with arguably the most famous goal in NHL history as Bobby Orr appeared to fly through the air as he scored the game winning goal in overtime to give the Bruins their first Stanley Cup since 1941. Meanwhile, the Blues have patiently waited.

The Blues have generally been a very good hockey team and have had high calibre players like Bernie Federko, Brian Sutter, Brett Hull, Pierre Turgeon, Al MacInnis and Chris Pronger. Indeed, the Blues reached the NHL post-season every year between 1980 and 2004 and were only stopped by the NHL lockout of 2005. Despite reaching the playoffs every year for a quarter century, the best the Blues could do was to twice reach the Conference Finals in 1986 and 2001.

Over the next six seasons, the Blues only qualified for the playoffs once. But beginning in 2012 began another playoff streak which lasted six seasons. However, the Blues did not make the playoffs last year and began 2019 with the worst record in the NHL. In late 2018, the Blues fired head coach Mike Yeo in favor of Craig Berube. Somehow the Blues turned things around and went 30-10-5 the rest of the way and defeated the Winnipeg Jets, Dallas Stars and the Sharks to get to a place they haven't been since Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada - Pierre Trudeau that is.

Of course, Boston has a chance to have the Bruins join the Red Sox and Patriots and win championships within a 12 month period and their 13th championship since 2002. But now that I have left the Hub there's a part of me that would like to see the Blues win their first ever Stanley Cup.