You might have thought, being a Blues fan for the largest part of my life, I would be used to the whole playoff chase thing. After all they made the playoffs every year from 1979 until they finally missed one in 2006. They were rarely threats to win it all, but making the playoffs was expected. Oh, once or twice they were close to missing the cut but it never really seemed all that likely. No, it took a season finishing dead last in the league to make missing the playoffs a reality.
However, since that dead last finish the Blues have looked just as unlikely of ever earning their way into the playoff again. The NHL was no longer the league where nearly everyone made the playoffs every year. It was possible to be lost in the wilderness for considerable periods of time. (Witness the fruitless seasons in Columbus since 2000.) Given the state of the roster, the ownership situation, and the lack of any sure-fire talent in college/juniors, a lengthy basement dwelling period was inevitable.
Don't get me wrong, that is exactly what happened. However, what I think I wasn't counting on was how much more enjoyable watching the Blues contend again would be after this period in the doldrums. It really isn't comparable to the other sports I follow. The Cards will also go through periods where they are not competing at the highest levels, but so few teams make the playoffs anyway, it is hard to think of October baseball as some sort of birth-right. (I know its different if you are a Yankees fan...but that doesn't make it right.) There has also been those season DC United misses the playoffs, but soccer teams are just mercurial in ways other teams in other sports are not. One year a team will absolutely suck, and the next, with almost the exact same roster, they will play great. You just chalk up missed play-offs as "one of those things" and move on.
Hockey doesn't work that way. Most of the time when a hockey team is deficient in an area it is glaringly obvious, and most of the times there is nothing a team can do about it on the fly. If, for example, the Cards need lefty help in the bullpen you can imagine them finding some way of plugging that hole, however imperfectly. But if you have suspect goal tending or a lack of first-line scoring in hockey you are screwed. In baseball you die by a thousand cuts and you hope not to run out of band-aids. In the NHL you die by severed arteries and all you have are band-aids.
That is what has been fun about this group of Blues and this management group. Slowly but surely you can see them working to remove the deficiencies littered in the organization. Draft-pick were accumulated, players scouted and selected, and the depth chart was filled out in a way alien to the history of the Blues. There was no quick fix, and in this day of the NHL salary cap maybe the quick fix is no longer a real option for any team. Now, the fruit of this hard work is starting to shine on the ice, and all of us Blues fans have had the chance to say "I was there from the beginning."
It looks like its the beginning of something good. Real, real good.
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