Sunday Notes: Are The Blues, As A Rival, Over?

Plus, thoughts on Erod, the long break upcoming and NHL 3 Best Bets

The St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019 and Ryan O’Reilly won the Conn Smythe Trophy. Nobody can ever take that away from the Blues and, for Avalanche fans who still hadn’t gotten over losing ROR, that stung big-time.

It’s been all Avs against the Blues since - and let’s not forget that 2018 winner-take-all Game 82 of the ‘17-18 season, in which the Avs won got the last playoff spot in the West over St. Louis.

In 2020, in the bubble in Edmonton, the Avs beat the Blues in a round-robin game to get a better seeding in the West - in a game Nazem Kadri scored to win with 0.1 seconds left. In 2021, the Avs swept St. Louis in the first round of the playoffs. In 2022, the Avs beat the Blues in the second round of the playoffs.

Yesterday, the Avs beat the Blues for the second time in three meetings this season and Jordan Binnington had another temper tantrum, pushing and shoving in the corner and prompting Alexandar Georgiev to come out of his net, a la Patrick Roy v. Detroit. The refs shooed him back.

The Blues, especially Binnington no doubt, HATE the Avs. Can’t blame ‘em. Question is: is this really a rivalry anymore? I don’t think the Blues will make the playoffs this year, and I think it’s going to get worse for them before it gets better, and that might be a long time. They’re going to have to do a rebuild. Guys like O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko will almost certainly get traded by the March 3 deadline.