A third-round loss to Colorado in 2000-01 was especially deflating. KXOK backed out of the contract after just 2 years, and the Blues immediately went back to KMOX, who held the rights until 2000. Pronger, Doug Weight and Mike Sillinger were all sent packing. October 1, 2019. [21] On March 29, 2019, the Blues became the seventh team in NHL since the 196768 season to qualify for the playoffs after being placed last after January 1. ST. LOUIS (AP) Mike Shanahan, who owned the St. Louis Blues from 1986-91 and oversaw the acquisition of Hall of Famer Brett Hull, has died. Disillusioned by Keenan's contentious style, Gretzky became a free agent and departed for New York. List Of St Louis Blues Owners. But with former Blues goaltender and nationally renowned broadcaster John Davidson at the point, they turned the worm. St. Louis kept chugging along through the late 1980s and early 1990s. The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the six teams from the 1967 NHL expansion and is named after the W. C. Handy song "Saint Louis Blues". Veteran player Al Arbour hastily stepped in to coach the team. The arena was previously known as Scottrade Center, the Savvis Center, and before that as the Kiel Center. During the 3rd Period, The Blues were winning by a large margin against the visiting Nashville Predators. {{start_at_rate}} {{format_dollars}} {{start_price}} {{format_cents}} {{term}}, {{promotional_format_dollars}}{{promotional_price}}{{promotional_format_cents}} {{term}}, 4 killed, 4 critically injured in crash at South Grand Boulevard and Forest Park Avenue, Parents push back on allegations against St. Louis transgender center. The arena quickly became one of the loudest buildings in the NHL, a reputation it maintained throughout its tenure as the Blues' home. But a competing carnival owner hatches a scheme to put an end to the show before it begins. That included Federko, Gassoff, Hull, MacInnis, Bob and Barclay Plager, Pronger and Sutter, along with Kelly, the Blues' legendary broadcaster. Starting after a couple of players heard "Gloria" by Laura Branigan, after their win in Philadelphia on January 3, 2019, the team started to use the song after every home win, and lasted all the way up to their Stanley Cup win. Under Bowman, the Blues dominated the West for the next two seasons, becoming the only expansion team to compile a winning record, and they captured division titles by wide margins each year. During this time, from 1989 to 2000, more games began to be aired on Prime Sports Midwest, the forerunner to today's Bally Sports Midwest. Following the Black Hawks' championship in 1961, the team became much more successful at the box office in Chicago, thus St. Louis was no longer useful as a secondary market. In 200910, despite not having a playoff year, the Blues had an average attendance of 18,883 (98.6% total capacity), selling out 34 of its 40 home games, which placed them seventh in the NHL in attendance. Members of the Blues' all-local ownership group include Tom Stillman, Jerald Kent, Donn Lux, James Cooper, Jo Ann Taylor Kindle, Steve Maritz, Edward Potter, Andrew Taylor, David Steward, Jim. The team did not even participate in the 1983 NHL draft, forfeiting all of its picks. Ralston Purina lost an estimated $1.8 million a year during its six-year ownership of the Blues. However, had the league not found a new owner by August 6, it would dissolve the team and hold a dispersal draft for the players. The team would dominate the postseason awards, as Pronger earned a Hart Trophy as the league's most valuable player, Pavol Demitra got the Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly play and Quenneville was named coach of the year. During the 2012 playoffs, they won their first playoff series since 2002, eliminating the San Jose Sharks in five games. The day after the draft, the NHL filed a $78 million counter-suit against Ralston, accusing Ralston of "damaging the league by willfully, wantonly and maliciously collapsing its St. Louis Blues hockey operation." As general manager and coach, Keenan traded away the popular Brendan Shanahan, tested patience with other curious transactions and cultivated a toxic relationship with Hull. On September 2, 2020, the Blues traded goaltender Jake Allen, who had spent ten years in the Blues organization, to the Montreal Canadiens.[29]. The Blues joined the league in 1967, one of six expansion teams that doubled the size of the NHL from six to 12. Ornest had made plans to buy the team as early as March, but built up his efforts in late June to have enough money. As part of the expansion, the NHL had agreed to put all of the expansion teams in the new Western Division, an arrangement which was intended to ensure all of the new teams all had an equal chance of reaching the playoffs. The Blues became the first team in NHL history to finish first overall in the standings and lose in the first round of the playoffs. The deferred contracts came due just as the Blues' performance began to slip. On March 17, 2011, it was announced that the St. Louis Blues were for sale. However, longtime Ralston Purina chairman R. Hal Dean said that he only intended to keep the Blues as a Ralston subsidiary only temporarily until a more stable owner could be found who would keep the team in St. Louis. Two-year process yields the most desirable outcome in terms of the city's best interest. The standard for other teams was 60 players. Boyer also plays the latter song on the organ after Blues goals, with fans replacing the word "Saints" with "Blues. The move proved both ill-conceived and ill-timed, as the renamed St. Louis Eagles continued to lose money. They faced the third-seeded Vancouver Canucks in the first round, but despite the team's tremendous run to end the season, the Blues would ultimately lose the series in a quick four-game sweep. For the full season-by-season history, see List of St. Louis Blues seasons, Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, OTL = Overtime losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against. The team is named after the famous W. C. Handy song "St. Louis Blues", and plays in the 19,150-seat Scottrade Center in downtown St. Louis. Blues games, many of which were crucial to playoff berths, would often be pre-empted for spring training coverage. This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Blues. In response, the Blues moved back to KMOX starting in the 200607 season. However, St. Louis ended their first-round losing streak by beating Chicago 32 in game 7 of the series. They missed the playoffs for only the fourth time in franchise history. Seriously underwater., Arch Madness: 2023 MVC Basketball Tournament bracket, schedule, game times, TV info, Centene expects to lose millions of Medicaid customers beginning in April, St. Louis man charged in quadruple fatal crash; police say he ran off with his license plate, Neman: Missouri womans saga of trying to find common sense at Walmart, I can still hear the roaring of the engine, says father of teen maimed in downtown St. Louis. With the Blues' victory in their fourth Stanley Cup Finals, 49 years after their last appearance and in their 52nd year of existence, they became the final active team from the 1967 expansion to win their first Stanley Cup. Last chance! Blues current owner Tom Stillman (left) and Carol Salomon, the former wife of original owner Sid Salomon III. He saw the Blues as just another money-bleeding division, and put the team on the market. The former New York Rangers goaltender promptly made multiple blockbuster deals, picking up Jay McKee, Bill Guerin and Manny Legace from free agency, and bringing Doug Weight back to St. Louis after a brief (and productive) stopover in Carolina. Keenan instituted major changes, including trades that sent away fan favorites Brendan Shanahan and Curtis Joseph, as well as the acquisition of the legendary-but-aging Wayne Gretzky and goaltender Grant Fuhr, both from the declining Los Angeles Kings. All that hardware notwithstanding, hopes for a Stanley Cup run turned to stunning disappointment. In the Round Robin tournament for the four top-seeded teams of the conference, the Blues failed to get a win, and thus despite winning the regular-season conference title, they ended up being the fourth seed in the West. The Blues kept 26 players under contract, 23 of them in St. Louis. The team's first owners were insurance tycoon Sid Salomon Jr., his son, Sid Salomon III, and Robert L. Wolfson, who were granted the franchise in 1966. Coming off their defeat of the Presidents' Trophy winning Canucks, the Kings ousted the Blues in four games. Indeed, many of the Blues' players liked the fact that their families could hear the games on KMOX. Moreover, for the first time in club history, the normally excellent support seen by St. Louisans began decrease, with crowds normally numbering around 12,000, notably less than the team's normal high (about 18,000 in a 19,500-seat arena). Brad Boyes, picked up from the Boston Bruins in exchange for Wideman, became the fastest Blues player to reach 40 goals since Brett Hull, doing so during the 200708 season. From 1967 to 1984, the Blues jerseys featured a lighter shade of blue along with contrasting shoulder yoke and stripes. They play their home games at the 19,150-seat Enterprise Center in downtown St. Louis, which has been their arena since moving from St. Louis Arena in 1994. In the midst of it, in 1999, the Clark Enterprises consortium of 19 St. Louis companies that owned the franchise sold it to Bill Laurie and his wife, Nancy, daughter of Wal-Mart co-founder Sam Walton. [41], At the end of the national anthem before every home game, the words "the home of the brave" are drowned out by fans with "the home of the Blues. Ornest immediately reverted the name of the team's home venue to the St. Louis Arena. In 1986, the team reached the Campbell Conference finals and produced one of its signature moments, a "Monday Night Miracle" comeback victory in Game 6. The Black Hawks owners felt they could establish a "lovable loser" (much like the Cubs) with the St. Louis hockey team. For the first time in five years (that is, since the lockout), the Blues were in the playoffs. The cash-poor Ornest then ran the franchise on a skeletal budget. However, the NHL Board of Governors rejected the deal by a 153 vote on May 18, feeling that Saskatoon was not big enough or financially stable enough to support an NHL team.[8][9]. Mike Keenan was hired as both general manager and coach before the abbreviated 199495 season, with the hope that he could end the postseason turmoil that Blues fans had endured for years.