Since the St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019, it’s been one of the most-asked questions regarding the roster: Why did they go away from a Craig Berube-style, physical lineup at forward, particularly on the fourth line?
The answer is multifaceted:
• The Blues deserve all of the credit in the world for winning the Cup, but sometimes you make the right pickups, draw up line combinations that find chemistry and everything falls into place. It’s not “magic in a bottle” because there are decisions involved, but the club didn’t plan to have a bottom six of Pat Maroon, Tyler Bozak and Robert Thomas on the third line, and Ivan Barbashev, Oskar Sundqvist and Alexander Steen on the fourth line. Maroon was nearly placed on waivers, Bozak wouldn’t even have been a Blue if the Ryan O’Reilly trade with Buffalo had gone through sooner, and Thomas was a rookie who could’ve been sent back to junior hockey that season. Meanwhile, Sundqvist was viewed as a throw-in player in the Ryan Reaves trade with Pittsburgh, and if Steen hadn’t agreed to move down the lineup for the sake of the team, he wouldn’t have been there. But … it worked, and so from that day forward, it will always be seen as the winning formula.
• Rosters evolve. You could make the case that the Blues should’ve re-signed Maroon, but even so, Thomas climbed the ranks, Bozak and Steen retired, Sundqvist suffered a couple of injuries that led to a trade and Barbashev was dealt, too.
• It’s difficult to replace good players, especially for a club like the Blues, who have been at the NHL’s salary cap every season since. You spend every summer trying to find the right fit at the right price, and even then it’s not a guarantee. With limited cap space, they’ve tried to fill out a fourth line with Kyle Clifford, Klim Kostin, Dakota Joshua, Nathan Walker and Tyler Pitlick, among others.
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• Lastly, the league changes. In the past four years, the game has become faster and even more rush-based, and the Blues were attempting to make those adjustments with players like Thomas and Jordan Kyrou in their top six. Certainly, they weren’t trying to put together a roster with three or four lines of transition-type players, but as fans know, the fourth line had zero continuity and zero identity.
You may disagree with a few of those factors, but if there’s one thing fans can come together on going into the 2023-24 season, it’s that the Blues need to get back to a blue-collar, hard-working style of play. It may not be something that takes them on another long Stanley Cup run, but for a team that’s using the words “work ethic,” “consistency” and “pride” a lot lately, that’s where it starts. And it appears the organization has come to that realization in the past year, bringing back Sammy Blais, Sundqvist and Mackenzie MacEachern, acquiring Kevin Hayes and signing Nick Ritchie to a professional tryout.
A club that a few years ago couldn’t walk into a rink without being called heavy has regained some size, which as we’ve seen early in the preseason could lead to more finished checks and more success.
“Yeah, definitely, I think so,” Sundqvist said. “I think our style back in ’19, it was a really good mix between skill and grit and everyone doing the work. I feel if we can get that going, with everybody moving the same direction, we definitely can get that back. I’m excited looking up and down this lineup, seeing what we have. The emotions in the locker room have been great, and we have a good feeling in here.”
In the 2019 postseason, the Blues ranked No. 10 with 30.69 hits per game. No doubt, the postseason is different — there’s a ton of hitting — but the team knew what it wanted to look like and executed.
“You’re talking about a Stanley Cup-winning team, so it took everyone to win,” said Blues forward Brayden Schenn, a member of that roster and now the team’s captain. “We don’t have the forwards that are playing 25, 27 minutes a night. We use everyone on our team, and if you have a fourth line that can score you goals, bring you momentum, check, be physical, it just adds to your team, and the good teams usually have a good fourth line.”
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The Blues had one, and Alexey Toropchenko, who was playing for their former AHL affiliate in San Antonio, Texas, remembers it well.
“Sunny, Steener and Barby,” Toropchenko said. “It was a very important line for the team. They were just smart with the puck, hard to play against and played from the heart.”
The Blues haven’t had anything similar in the past few years, and they’ve tried an infinite number of combinations.
In 2019-20, with Steen limited to 55 games, the fourth line that saw the most action was Barbashev, Sundqvist and MacEachern, who was in his first tour of duty with the Blues. The threesome played 18 games together (149 minutes, 25 seconds at five-on-five), per NaturalStatTrick, and wasn’t bad, being on the ice for six goals for and just four against. But still, it wasn’t the chemistry that the line had with Steen.
In 2020-21, with Steen retired, there was a lot of mixing and matching, Barbashev, Sundqvist and Clifford played the most of any fourth-line combination (nine games, 63:36), and that’s when the production and identity began to slip significantly. The expected goal share for the team with Barbashev-Sundqvist-MacEachern playing was 52.96 percent, and for Barbashev-Sundqvist-Clifford, it fell to 41.89.
In 2021-22, Sundqvist-Bozak-Kostin totaled the most ice time together (nine games, 58:21), and their expected goal share was similarly low at 40.68.
All the while, the Blues’ hits per 60 minutes went from No. 18 in the NHL in ’19-20 (20.42) to No. 28 in ’21-22 (20.01).
Things improved in ’22-23, with Toropchenko-Walker-Pitlick (21 games, 158:31) on the ice for 10 goals for and just three against, carrying an expected goal share of 51.57. The team also leaped to No. 18 in hits per 60 (21.89).
But when Blues general manager Doug Armstrong assessed the lineup this summer, he went to work on the bottom six. He did that in part because he was handcuffed by long contracts and no-trade clauses and was limited in ways he could improve a team that had a 28-point drop-off in the standings last season. But he also wanted to bring back a familiar look for Berube.
Hayes, who’s centering the third line, is 6 foot 5, 216 pounds. He’s playing on a line with Blais, who’s 6-2, 206. On the fourth line, it’s Toropchenko (6-6, 222), Sundqvist (6-3, 220) and Jake Neighbours (6-foot, 201).
In ’19-20, the Blues’ roster ranked No. 7 in the league in both height and weight, according to Elite Prospects, with an average of 6-2, 203. Three years later in ’22-23, they were No. 16 in height (6-1) and No. 17 in weight (199 pounds).
This year, if you include the forwards who appear to be the potential opening-night lineup, the average height is back close to 6-2 and the average weight has increased to 206 pounds.
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“Size is important,” Berube said. “Bring in the big bodies. See what they can do. Whether they’re the 11th forward, 12th forward, 13th forward, whatever … it’s nice to have the big bodies. We’ve always been a heavy team here and a big team, so I think we don’t want to lose that identity. I saw Vegas (win the Stanley Cup) last year, and that was pretty much their style. Their fourth line was a heavy line, a forechecking line, an identity line.”
But beyond the brawn, it’s intelligence, too, like the Blues had in ’19.
No one has to remind fans what Sundqvist brings.
“Sunny, he wears on you, that guy, the way he just works and grinds and gets in the way and finds a way to get it done,” Berube said. “He’s a great identity player, a great guy, a great personality. He drives the bus. He’s an engine guy.”
The problem for Sundqvist has been injuries, with both hips needing surgery as well as two knee surgeries. But he says he’s coming into this season ready for the wear and tear.
“I feel like I’ve been preparing all summer for a season to play like that and my body to hold up to it,” Sundqvist said. “I’ve done everything I can to prepare for a style of game of throwing your body around. There’s no hesitation going into the season that I can do it.”
Sundqvist scored in the Blues’ 3-2 preseason win over the Arizona Coyotes at Enterprise Center. Meanwhile, Toropchenko scored the team’s lone goal in a 5-1 exhibition loss to the Coyotes in Wichita, Kan.
“Torpo is big and can skate, checks well, forechecks hard,” Schenn said. “He’s getting more confident and he’s a team player. You can never have enough of those guys.”
Despite a minor injury that kept him off the ice Sunday, Neighbours has been slotted on the fourth line with Sundqvist and Toropchenko, and that appears to be a realistic spot for him.
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“He’s grittier than you think,” Sundqvist said. “I feel like that fourth line is going to shape up to something that we had in 2019.”
Berube likes the look of the group.
“They’re pretty hard to handle out there, and it’s good to see,” he said.
If Ritchie does enough to earn a contract, he’ll add even more size and strength. At 6-3, 236 pounds, if you swap Ritchie for Neighbours, the average weight of the 12 forwards would be 209 pounds, and including just the bottom six, it would be 215.
At the moment, they’re nothing more than options, but they appear to be better — and bigger — options.
“We’re talking pieces right now,” Schenn said. “We haven’t seen anything as far as who’s on our roster and what it’s looking like. Guys are going to play all over the lineup, and (Berube) is going to play the guys that are going. But when you have a guy like Sunny, he brings guys into the fight. And Torpo.
“Whoever’s there, we’re looking forward to getting going.”
(Top photo of Oskar Sundqvist checking Micah Miller: Jeff Le / USA Today)
