I know a lot of Blues fans, and I've been one myself for quite sometime. Never, in the entirety of my life, have I heard more people complaining, and going to great lengths to bend facts or just blatantly making stuff up to try to prove that they have a leg to stand on. Even in the 80s and 90s, when we went fourteen years without getting past the second round, people didn't complain this much. There were several years of reloading, taking a step back and then trying again, and people were generally accepting and realistic about that. But now all of a sudden it's unacceptable for some reason. I don't see where people are getting their sense of entitlement, I guess. Seems to me like a case of bad expectations.
I expect this team to do well, and I want this team to win it all more than I want most things. But I can be patient. I enjoy the games because they're my team. And of course, there are things that I don't love about this team, but there are plenty of reasons to be happy and to be excited about this team's future. But to expect that every year we ought to be in the Cup finals is ridiculous. Hell, LA didn't even make the playoffs last year. To me, it's enough that we are a competitive team night in and night out, and that when I turn on the TV there's a pretty good chance that we're going to win that game. When the playoffs come around, we stand as good of a chance as anybody of breaking through. It's not a foregone conclusion that this team won't do well in the playoffs this year. You can pontificate all you want, but there's nothing tying regular season success to post-season production, there just isn't. Again, look at the Kings and Blackhawks who just squeak into the playoffs every year and then go on a run and get it done. I have faith that this team can do that, because they show me that they know how to win games, even when it isn't pretty. I refuse to hang onto past failures, because there's too many of them. And they don't bear on this season's results anyways. This is not the same team as last year, and yet some folks insist that we can't possibly do well. You can sit around and say "well you know our GA/GF isn't as good this year" all day, but the fact of the matter is that we're still doing better than 26 other teams. Seasonal results are relative. We are a top 5 team right now, and thems the facts.
I don't care that people want to criticize this team. This is the place for that discussion to happen. What bothers me is the bile that comes along with it, and the lengths that some people go to to drag players and coaches' names through the mud. It's totally uncalled for, and it's downright unsportsmanlike at times. When you can only look at this team by seething at it, of course you're going to be unhappy! So why should anybody trust your judgement? There's no reason for me or anybody else to accept arguments made by people who only want blood and vengeance out of this team. People aren't mad that this team isn't performing well this year (because we are performing well this year), people are mad because nobody hung for the Minnesota loss last year. It's shameful. And it makes people create this impossibly high standard for the team where any loss is taken as a sign of the end times. Great teams lose. Great teams make mistakes. Great teams find ways to win a majority of the time anyways, and we do that. But to hold a team that is currently over .500 to the grinder in the same way that I'd expect a team like the Leafs or Blue Jackets to treat their team is insulting to the integrity of this team.
I look at it from the point of view of justice. This team is successful until they prove to me that they aren't (i.e. innocent until proven guilty). They have my faith because I love this team. That doesn't mean I can't or won't criticize them, or offer my opinion on how they might be better, but I refuse to act like they owe me anything or that they are failures from the start. I know they'll probably let me down again, but hey that's part of being a Blues fan. They can have my faith anyways, and I wouldn't give it to anybody else if they paid me a million dollars for it. I just wish other people could enjoy it in that way too. So I do get defensive about this team, but I find it hard to sit around and let other people get the facts wrong, either intentionally or because they didn't even bother to check, in order to disparage the team that I love.
That's all I've got to say about that.