St Louis Blues

After a disappointing 24-21-5 start, the St. Louis Blues relieved head coach Ken Hitchcock of his position Wednesday.

The team announced that associate coach Mike Yeo—who was hired during the offseason to be Hitchcock's successor in 2017-18—will immediately assume head coaching duties.

The 65-year-old Hitchcock ranks fourth on the all-time NHL coaching wins list with 781, and he went 248-124-41 in parts of six seasons with the Blues.

Hitchcock led St. Louis to the playoffs in each of his five full campaigns with the team, including a trip to the Western Conference Final last season.

He reached the Stanley Cup Final on two occasions with the Dallas Stars, winning once, and won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's best coach in 2011-12.

Despite the Blues' uneven start to 2016-17, Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch believes the organization made a mistake in firing Hitchcock:

The Blues are currently clinging to the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, but they have enough talent to be a threat in the postseason if they manage to make it.

A locker-room shakeup with Yeo in charge may prove to be the jolt the team needs in order to return to the top of the conference.

Yeo went 173-132-44 in parts of five seasons with the Minnesota Wild, leading them to the playoffs three times and winning two playoff series in the process.

He was fired last season after a 23-22-10 start, but the 43-year-old remained highly regarded for the overall success he enjoyed in Minnesota.

St. Louis has lost five of its past six games, and while it can be argued that Hitchcock isn't the reason for that, his firing could be a necessary wake-up call for a team that is underperforming.

Nail Yakupov entered the NHL just four years ago as the consensus best prospect available in the 2012 draft and a future franchise cornerstone. Now the question is whether the 23-year-old can salvage a major league career.

The St. Louis Blues are determined to give him the best possible chance.

The Blues have several advantages over the Edmonton Oilers that give them a better shot at success with Yakupov than his former team ever had. They have a veteran roster, one with the ability to both complement and shelter the young winger. They have an experienced coach who knows his team. Critically, they also know exactly what they’re getting into.

When Yakupov joined the Oilers, it was as a high-profile scorer who was expected to shoulder some of the burden of turning around the team’s long, slow rebuild. He couldn’t live up to those expectations, and as the package the Blues traded for him shows, his goals in Missouri are going to be much more modest.

A 2017 third-round draft pick (which turns into a second-round pick in 2018 if Yakupov scores 15 goals) is at the heart of the deal, and it isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things. Other players moved for picks in that round include Zac Rinaldo, Mike Weber and Eric Gelinas.

Meanwhile, ECHLer Zach Pochiro carries negative value as a player with an NHL contract who is unlikely to ever play in the majors.

That’s a reclamation project price, and longtime Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock is the man with the primary task of making it pay off. Yakupov—who has never had a 35-point season in the NHL but has had a minus-35 campaign—might seem like an odd fit for the infamously defense-minded bench boss, but Hitchcock made it plain to NHL.com in the aftermath of the deal that he had a plan for Yakupov:

He has a skill set, and we want to enhance the skill set. We look at the stuff without the puck, it’s going to take time, and we’re in no hurry. We’re not going to turn a player into a defensive specialist; we don’t anticipate doing that at all. We want to take what his strengths are and get him to really focus on that.

In the early going, that’s precisely what Hitchcock has done. Rather than focus on hammering a square peg into a round hole, he has treated Yakupov as an offensive specialist. The results have been somewhat uneven, but the plan seems to be working.

The first thing Hitchcock did was shelter Yakupov like he’s never been sheltered before.

In terms of quality of competition, Yakupov ranks ninth among St. Louis forwards, right in the middle of the team’s bottom six. Entering action against the New York Rangers on Tuesday, he had been on the ice for 35 offensive zone faceoffs, as opposed to just 12 on the defensive end of the rink, per Corsica. Other coaches, most notably Dallas Eakins, have tried similar tactics, but none of them came close to giving Yakupov a 3-1 ratio of offensive to defensive zone starts.

Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings was fairly typical. Yakupov played just under nine minutes at five-on-five, virtually all of them with Patrik Berglund and Robby Fabbri and with more than half of them coming against the dregs of the Los Angeles lineup—the forward line of Nic Dowd, Andy Andreoff and Dustin Brown and the third pair of Tom Gilbert and Derek Forbort. That’s what it looks like when a coach chases a favourable matchup, and few do it better than Hitchcock.

Yakupov has just four points in 10 games, which may not sound like much of a return for those efforts. The important thing to remember, though, is that Hitchcock isn’t using Yakupov on the power play yet. At five-on-five, Yakupov’s four points are tied for the team lead, and he collected them with far fewer minutes than most of the team’s other scorers.

Yet it was Yakupov’s defensive game that caught the coach’s eye following his debut, as reported by Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

You know what? He was much better defensively than I thought. He’s got great outside speed. ... I think we’ve got a lot of work in progress there. What I liked more than anything was his conscience. His conscience was there.

Yakupov’s underlying metrics look pretty good; he’s close to the team lead in terms of Corsi. Given how he’s been used, it’s not worth reading too much into that, but it’s a welcome change from past campaigns.

The caveats are both numerous and obvious. It’s early, for one thing. It’s also a different matter to succeed inside the bubble that Hitchcock has so carefully constructed around his project than it is to do so outside of it. How Yakupov handles the inevitable adversity he’ll face over the remainder of this season and beyond is still open to question.

Right now, however, it appears the relationship between player and team is flourishing, to the benefit of both parties.  

Statistical information courtesy Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Reference. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.

The St. Louis Blues acquired right winger Nail Yakupov from the Edmonton Oilers on Friday, according to TSN's Jason Gregor and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Jeremy Rutherford. 

The Blues confirmed the deal and announced that Yakupov was nabbed in exchange for a 2017 conditional third-round pick and forward Zach Pochiro. TSN Sport's Frank Seravalli noted the pick can become a 2018 second-round selection if Yakupov scores at least 15 goals this season.  

Yakupov burst on the scene with 17 goals and 14 assists during his rookie year, but his production hasn't lived up to that solid standard in the seasons since. 

The 23-year-old mustered just 11 goals and 13 assists during the 2013-14 season, and he followed that up by tallying 14 goals and 19 helpers the following year.

His production continued to reside in fairly average territory last season as the once-adored prospect managed a career-low eight goals and 15 assists in 60 games. That said, Yakupov was only minus-16 in the plus-minus column, which represented the best mark of his career since his debut campaign (minus-four). 

But even though he hasn't lived up to expectations thus far, Yakupov will be a low-risk, high-reward play for the Blues. Not only is he still just 23, but Yakupov has one year and $2.5 million remaining on his deal. 

"He's got the skill to compliment our group, and the game is trending to younger and faster players," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said, according to the team's official Twitter account. 

And if Yakupov does thrive in new surroundings, the Blues will have a chance to keep him under team control when he becomes a restricted free agent following the 2016-17 season. 

Considering they paid a bargain-basement price for a player who was once believed to be a potential franchise cornerstone, the Blues can't be knocked for gambling on a talent who could help the offense thrive in due time. 

Contract information courtesy of Spotrac. 

The St. Louis Blues and forward Alexander Steen came to terms on a contract extension Friday that will pay the veteran a total of $23 million over the next four years. 

The team officially announced Steen's new deal, which is worth $5.75 million per season.

Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said the following regarding the organization's decision to keep Steen in the fold: "We are extremely excited to have Alexander signed for the next four seasons. He has developed into one of the league's premier 200-foot players and is a key member of our leadership group. He has shown tremendous loyalty to the Blues organization, our fans and the St. Louis community."

The 32-year-old Swede has spent the past eight seasons in St. Louis after beginning his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Steen registered 17 goals and 52 points in 67 games for the Blues in 2015-16 while adding four goals and 10 points in 20 playoff contests.

The two-way left winger topped 60 points in each of the two seasons preceding 2015-16, scoring a career-high 33 goals in 2013-14.

After multiple years of failing to make deep postseason runs, the Blues made progress last season and reached the Western Conference Final.

Locking up Steen as part of a deep forward group that also includes Vladimir Tarasenko, Paul Stastny, Patrik Berglund, Jaden Schwartz and Robby Fabbri should go a long way toward keeping St. Louis among the Western Conference's elite for many years to come.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

Veteran winger David Perron reached an agreement on a contract with the St. Louis Blues on Friday. 

Perron announced on Twitter he is going back to the team that drafted him in the first round in 2007:

Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press (via the News Tribune) reported it's a two-year deal worth $7.5 million. 

Perron found his stride after the Pittsburgh Penguins traded him to the Anaheim Ducks in January. He tallied 20 points (eight goals and 12 assists) in 28 games for the Ducks, which represented a major uptick in production after he put up just 16 points in 43 games with the Penguins before the trade.

The 28-year-old left winger has bounced around the league since leaving the Blues, where he spent the first six years of his career, after the 2012-13 campaign. He has spent time with the Ducks, Penguins and Edmonton Oilers over the past three seasons.

At his best, he's a reliable two-way contributor capable of playing on the second line and contributing on special teams. His best offensive season came with the Oilers in 2013-14, when he registered 28 goals and 29 assists for 57 points in 78 contests.

He showed signs of getting back to that level more consistently with the Ducks following his midseason arrival. In February, he talked about the renewed positive vibes he felt, as relayed by Curtis Zupke of the Los Angeles Times: "[It's] just knowing that you're a guy that can make a difference out there every night. It's definitely a good feeling. For the most part of my career, that's how I felt. It's good to go back to that."

In the end, Perron is on the move again, as he begins a second journey with the Blues. Some of his inconsistent production in recent years can be attributed to changing teams so frequently. He'll hope the latest move goes as smoothly as when he joined Anaheim.

The Blues were in the market for a scorer with David Backes and Troy Brouwer both testing free agency this summer. Perron showed a lot down the stretch with the Ducks to convince St. Louis that he's going to be able to fill the void next season. 

Perron has shown throughout his career he can be a high-impact player in stretches. He'll hope the latest move allows him to showcase that talent on a more regular basis.

The St. Louis Blues are preparing for their future by naming Mike Yeo their head coach for the 2017-18 season. 

Per Chris Pinkert of the Blues' official website, Yeo has been hired by the team as an associate coach for next season before taking over for Ken Hitchcock when he retires following the 2016-17 season. 

Per Pinkert's release, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong praised Yeo's experience and success as a coach:

We’re excited to have [Yeo] join us as an associate coach for next season and to become the next head coach for the St. Louis Blues for three years after that. For being 42 years old, he’s got a lot of experience. He’s won a Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh, he’s taken an American League team to the finals and you saw the good job he did in Minnesota in taking that team to the second round. What excites me is his experience, but with his age, he can really relate to today’s players and it’s an exciting day for our team.

Yeo also received a hearty endorsement from Hitchcock, per Pinkert: "I feel really confident that the team and the franchise is going to be in great shape with Mike at the helm."

Hitchcock gave the Blues ample time to find their next head coach. He signed a one-year extension on May 31 and left no doubt it would be his final season on the bench while leaving the door open for other jobs. 

"I'm not coaching after this year," Hitchcock said, per Craig Custance of ESPN.com. "I don't know if I'm going to retire."

Yeo has built up a strong coaching resume despite being just 42 years old. He had a 173-132-44 record in nearly five full seasons as head coach of the Minnesota Wild from 2011 to 2016, leading the team to three straight playoff appearances before being fired in February. 

Prior to Yeo's arrival, the Wild had not made the playoffs since the 2007-08 season.

He is walking into an outstanding situation, as the Blues have finished with more than 100 points in each of the last three seasons and advanced to the Western Conference Final this year for the first time since 2001. 

Fortunately, Yeo will have a full season to learn from Hitchcock and get to know the St. Louis roster before taking over. He has an excellent track record of turning teams around. Working with a team that is already built to win will provide him an opportunity to reach the pinnacle of the sport. 

After losing to the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference Final, St. Louis Blues star Alexander Steen underwent shoulder surgery Friday and will be re-evaluated in four months, per Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Continue for updates. 

Steen Played Through Shoulder Injury

Friday, June 3

Steen's surgery came two days after Andy Strickland of Fox Sports Midwest reported the 32-year-old played with an injured shoulder throughout the postseason.

There's been no confirmation of when the injury occurred, though Steen suffered an injury during a February game against the Arizona Coyotes in which he was knocked to the ice, with his left side crashing into the boards.

Steen was St. Louis' second-leading scorer during the regular season with 52 points in only 67 games. He became less of a factor as the playoffs progressed, though, scoring just two points in six games against the Sharks after recording eight in 14 games during the first two rounds. 

The Blues scored only 13 goals in the series against the Sharks and were shut out in Games 2 and 3. 

With Steen set to be re-evaluated in four months, the Blues may need a contingency plan to prepare for the possibility that one of their best offensive weapons won't be around when the 2016-17 season begins.

After leading the St. Louis Blues to the Western Conference Final, Ken Hitchcock will return as the team's head coach for the 2016-17 season. 

The team announced Tuesday that the 64-year-old signed a one-year extension after coaching under a one-year contract throughout the 2015-16 campaign. Hitchcock later told reporters that it's his last one-year deal, and that he will end his coaching career after next season.

Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was the first to report that the former Jack Adams Award winner would be back for a sixth season with the Blues.

Hitchcock has won almost two-thirds of his regular-season games since joining the Blues, going 224-103-36. Winning in the playoffs has been his Achilles' heel, however.

Even though the veteran coach has led St. Louis to the postseason in each of his five years at the helm, he won just a single playoff series prior to 2015-16.

Hitchcock and the Blues finally reached the Western Conference Final this season, but they fell short of the Stanley Cup Final once again when they were eliminated by the San Jose Sharks.

Due to the team's inability to get over that final hurdle during Hitchcock's tenure, former Blues forward Andy McDonald blasted the decision to re-sign him:

@allsmandrew Hitch back? Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein#poorfans

— Andy McDonald (@10_AMac) May 31, 2016

Hitchcock is fourth on the all-time regular-season head coaching wins list with 757. Although his playoff success has been somewhat limited in recent years, he has reached the postseason in 14 of his 20 years as an NHL head coach with the Dallas Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Columbus Blue Jackets and Blues.

He also won a Stanley Cup with the Stars in 1999 and led them to the Stanley Cup Final once again the following season.

While only those within the locker room truly know the players' perception of Hitchcock, defenseman Alex Pietrangelo's comments following the season suggest that there is respect for the coach even if he isn't necessarily beloved, per Rutherford:

You aren't always going to love your boss, right? 'Hitch' is a competitor, he knows how to push the right buttons. It's not easy to accept it in the moment. But when you look back and look at the overall picture now of what he was able to do, obviously he's doing it for a reason. He's had success in this league for so long for a reason. Sometimes you don't always agree with it, but it works.

The Blues are easily among the NHL's most talented teams, and while they have a chance to contend for the Stanley Cup once again in 2016-17, they could face some challenges.

Key forwards David Backes and Troy Brouwer are both set to become unrestricted free agents, and replacing their production will be difficult should they opt to sign elsewhere.

St. Louis is an extremely deep team at every position, though, and reaching the Western Conference Final represents the most positive building block it has had during Hitchcock's tenure.

The pieces are in place to reach a Stanley Cup Final from a personnel perspective, but the onus is now entirely on Hitchcock to prove he is the right person to get the job done behind the bench.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

Goaltending was the difference in Game 1. And when it comes to what’s looking like an epic battle between the San Jose Sharks and St. Louis Blues in the Western Conference Final, Blues backstop Brian Elliott’s playoff redemption could be the storyline of the series.

It was a single blunder in an otherwise solid game by Sharks netminder Martin Jones that proved to be the deciding factor in a 2-1 loss to the Blues on Sunday at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis. Just shy of the midway point of the contest, a puck that wasn’t quite settled when the Blues’ Jori Lehtera slapped at it from a reasonably safe distance found some space under Jones’ arm as he tried to squeeze it shut.

It was the only goal in a period the Sharks, not Blues, dominated on the shot clock by a count of 16-5. That fact wasn't lost on Sharks coach Peter DeBoer, who singled out the period as a turning point, as Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pointed out via Twitter. 

Elliott, meanwhile, was nearly perfect.

Just "nearly" because he benefitted from a fairly quick whistle on a shot that slipped under his glove and eventually got pushed into the net, and then, during the desperate blitz by the Sharks to tie the game with their own net empty in the third period, he watched two pucks hit the post and stay out of the mesh.

But you can’t even fault Elliott on the one goal the Sharks did score, which was first tipped by Joe Pavelski and then again redirected by Tomas Hertl.

As the Blues have been desperately seeking a playoff goaltender to replace Elliott the past couple of years, Elliott himself has proved the best candidate.

Yes, the Blues were so disappointed in Elliott’s lack of success in the 2012 and 2013 postseasons that they made a big move to bring in Ryan Miller at the trade deadline in ’14. When that didn't pan out and they let him walk as a free agent, the Blues started Jake Allen in the playoffs a year ago, even though Elliott started more games and had a better save percentage and goals-against average in the regular season.

In case you’re curious, those two playoff disappointments with Elliott in the starting role both came against the Los Angeles Kings, who won the Stanley Cup themselves in 2012 and then fell to the eventual Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks in the conference final in 2013. His save percentage wasn’t spectacular in the first meeting, at .904, but it’s tough to blame a guy with a .919 save percentage and 1.89 GAA—which is what Elliott contributed in 2013 while falling to the Kings in six games in the first round. Perhaps he didn’t make the spectacular saves when most needed, but he didn’t get enough goal support, either.

But that, as they say, is history.

We’re talking about his comeback. The 31-year-old is clearly one of the top goaltenders of the 2016 NHL playoffs. Those much-needed saves in timely moments? He’s offering them up in every round. In almost every game.

He’s in a Conn Smythe battle with his captain, David Backes, who had another strong performance in Game 1. Backes took five of his team’s 23 shots on goal on Sunday, threw 11 hits (nearly half of his team’s recorded checks and just three shy of the Sharks’ total), opened the scoring with a great deflection on a power play 15:04 into the first perio, and even got into a beard-pulling match with the Sharks’ Joe Thornton.

But as big a night as Backes had, it’s Elliott who was the difference.

He made highlight-reel stops, including a beautiful kick with the right leg on Pavelski, and a stacked-pad slide that denied Patrick Marleau on a great setup from Joe Thornton.

He remained calm and collected as he faced a barrage of pucks in the dying minutes, and gave credit after the contest to his teammates for not allowing the Sharks to get too many glorious opportunities in front of him.

“They came on strong,” Elliott told Christine Simpson on the CBC broadcast, in what might be the understatement of the spring. “I was just basically trying to stay in the middle of the net and the guys did the rest of the job. They kept everything to the outside except for the last shot, and he was under pressure.”

Stopping 31 of 32 shots for a save percentage of .969 on the night, Elliott’s total through 15 games in these playoffs is now .932—third best among those who qualify with at least 440 minutes of ice time. 

It’s by far Elliott’s best showing in five postseason appearances with the Ottawa Senators and Blues in a decade-long career.

Guess he gets better with age.

Maybe they should change his nickname from Moose to Merlot.