looking back honestly everyone should've just wanted him to stay and go for 700. the franchise wasn't going anywhere during that time.
We only missed the playoffs by 5 points the year before, and with 0 shootout wins in 13 shootout appearances.
Looking back on it, that team probably overachieved to have such good possession numbers. It was an old team and couldn't score, and played very low event hockey. They didn't give up many chances, nor generate a whole lot either, but still generated a bit more than the gave up, if I remember correctly. Jagr also turned the clock back quite a few years that season. He was still good the next year, but not nearly that good. It was basically the same team the next season, but it was already an old team that was another year older and guys like Zubrus and Ryder were really falling apart. Havlat (who we signed that offseason) was really broke when he got here and had been injury riddled for years by that point and as sad as this was at the time and probably would have drawn a lot of ridicule, Ruutu was probably a considerable downgrades from.............Andrei Loktionov. But still, that team wasn't far from a playoff berth. Pretty sure it was never winning a round, barring a really hot Schneider stealing a series.
So I think it was reasonable to think that team, only with Schneider playing 60 games instead of a little over 40, could get a playoff berth, and having Brodeur sitting back there did not seem to be conducive in ensuring Schneider got that many games in. And there was also the idea that Cory might not wanna sign an extension if we f***ed around by bringing Marty back. He never said anything like he wouldn't, but would anyone blame him if he didn't want to? After sitting 4 and now potentially 5 years of his NHL career behind either Luongo or Brodeur and being 28 years old by that point?
Now, like I said, that season was lost by December, which was right around the time Brodeur was making his debut for the Blues. If Marty were still sitting out there hoping to catch on for a team and hadn't already signed in St. Louis, I would have been all for bringing him back for one last go. With how bad that team was, it still wouldn't have ensured he would have gotten the 12 or 13 more wins needed to hit 700 by December onward, unless he was playing almost of all of the games.
There were some people who wanted Marty to come back in January of that season after he was done with the Blues and they had no more use for him, but at that point it was almost like ''Why even bother?'' after he had already played for another organization anyway.