The Blues were back at school Thursday morning.
With new colors and some fresh faces, a familiar coach leading his first training camp in St. Louis, and the heightened expectations of a team on the rise, the Blues opened camp Thursday morning at Centene Community Ice Center. While there are still three weeks before the Blues open the regular season at home Oct. 9 against Minnesota, the start of training camp marked the end of hypothetical hockey.
“Intensity was good,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “Pace was slow in a couple of drills, but really good in other drills where we had to battle each other. I liked the way our second and third effort is naturally being there on the first day. Execution was not where we would like it, but you kind of expect that a little bit on day one.”
Montgomery enters his first full season with the Blues after he was hired in November to replace Drew Bannister. He led the Blues to a late-season turnaround that including a franchise-record 12-game win streak and the club’s first playoff berth since 2022. The Blues lost in seven games to the Jets in the first round, infamous for a crushing double-overtime loss in Game 7.
Most of that team returns this fall, with tweaks to the Blues’ depth. Centers Pius Suter and Nick Bjugstad have joined the fold, as has Logan Mailloux on the back end. Zack Bolduc, Radek Faksa, Ryan Suter and Nick Leddy are gone.
“I think we have a lot of guys that are going to make a step this year in the right direction,” captain Brayden Schenn said. “At the same time, the league’s humbling. We have a very good division. Anyone can beat anyone. There’s a lot of good teams where we’ll be playing hard games against. We’re looking forward to the challenge this year, but if you look at our roster, we feel confident in our roster that we can have a good team.”
The message remains consistent throughout the organization from general manager Doug Armstrong to Montgomery to Schenn: this is a distinct team from the 2024-25 version.
“There’s some confidence for sure, but at the end of the day, we didn’t accomplish anything last year,” Schenn said. “We don’t have to be arrogant about anything. We know we can be a good team, but we have a lot of work to do. That’s the best way we have to look at it. We have to get better. Definitely have a good camp here, and come out with a good start this year. That’s going to be important for us. Worry about those two things here first.”
Montgomery said memories of Game 7 in Winnipeg are in the past.
“I think it’s motivation because we don’t like the way we finished that game,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t advance. We should have advanced. But we’re not belaboring it. We’re going to learn from it, and we’re going to get better. That’s our mindset. Starting off camp right now, we’re not thinking about Game 7. We’re thinking about getting off to a great start this year.”
A good start would be a welcome change in St. Louis from previous seasons. The Blues were 9-12-1 when Bannister was fired. They were 13-14-1 when Craig Berube was fired in Dec. 2023. In 2022, the Blues started 11-14-0, which included an eight-game losing streak.
In order to get off to a better start, Montgomery has factors in mind already.
“Competing is going to be No. 1,” Montgomery said. “Playing with pace, being selfless, things that gave us a lot of success, but we need to ramp it up a couple of levels. You’ve got to get off to a great start. If you don’t have a good camp, you don’t get off to a good start. Today was a good day one, I expect it to be better tomorrow.”
During training camp, Montgomery will also be hammering the habits and details he expects from his team on a night-to-night basis that should form the identity for what this group can become.
“Stopping on pucks, never turning your back on the puck, winning the net-front battle, having the courage to get there offensively or the courage to stop someone defensively,” Montgomery said. “Reloading right away, trying to get pucks back within three to five seconds when we lose possession. Those are the habits and details, along with great sticks defensively and being physical, that we’re looking to become part of our fiber more than last year.”
Under Montgomery, the Blues went 35-18-7, the seventh-best points percentage in the NHL that would have put St. Louis on a 105-pace across an 82-game season. So the leadership of Montgomery isn’t anything new, even if his training camp is.
“You just feel like you’re ahead of the game,” Montgomery said. “You can see it out there because I thought almost all of our returnees really executed well. They were making plays, they looked fast, they looked strong. It’s good when you see that a lot of players that were playing in the system are that much further ahead. That helps us.”
The Blues will be back on the ice at 9:30 a.m. Friday at Centene Community Ice Center. The second group takes the ice at 11:30 a.m. Both sessions are free and open to the public.
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Matthew DeFranks | Post-Dispatch
Hockey reporter
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