Who wants to tank?

[sbet1998]

Im curious. Do you think a draft pick or picks is worth tanking the Blues and their winning culture?

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Anyone who thinks the 2019 team finally winning a Cup had anything to do with the 2005-06 team tanking thirteen years prior is clearly out of their mind.

Can your team draft a generational player? Sure, if they get lucky. Does that mean wins? Ask McDavid.

Is every generational player drafted in the top 10? Nope. Some are not even in the first round. STL sports fans should know that. How many late round draft picks or guys who were bagging groceries do we need to see make the HOF before you realize that?

Maybe having a little more respect for the winning culture the Blues have cultivated for over half a century isnt a bad idea.

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[Celtic Note]

Im curious. Do you think a draft pick or picks is worth tanking the Blues and their winning culture?

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Anyone who thinks the 2019 team finally winning a Cup had anything to do with the 2005-06 team tanking thirteen years prior is clearly out of their mind.

Can your team draft a generational player? Sure, if they get lucky. Does that mean wins? Ask McDavid.

Is every generational player drafted in the top 10? Nope. Some are not even in the first round. STL sports fans should know that. How many late round draft picks or guys who were bagging groceries do we need to see make the HOF before you realize that?

Maybe having a little more respect for the winning culture the Blues have cultivated for over half a century isnt a bad idea.

It’s seems like the purpose of this thread is to railroad those that disagree with you rather than having a meaningful discussion based on the contents of this post.

 

[PocketNines]

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Overall a terrible post, but this is the worst part, since the GM himself has explicitly stated to the press that the Blues are following the LA model and LA has had not one not two but three top 10 picks very recently.

Of course the commitment to drafting and having a really strong employee – Bill Armstrong – brought the Blues from their bottoming out era to the top. Bill is committed to restocking his roster with top end players. Doug Armstrong doesn't really grasp the significance of the difference between good and great. Bill built the Blues a Cup with some incredibly strong drafting. A huge percentage of the Blues Cup team was homegrown, and the players brought in were brought in using the 1st round draft picks in the cupboard. We literally just saw this, why are we aggressively forgetting, is gaslighting ourselves that appealing?

A major flaw in the OP is the unchallenged, false premise that reloading in the draft with the right players only leads to years of terrible results and loss of culture. No attempt whatsoever to buttress such a flimsy premise. It's called competition! Hello! Who cares if some other franchises struggle? Why do you have to be stupid like these perennial imbecile franchises like Edmonton and Toronto? Just because you are a charter member of the Old Boys Club does not mean you have to do what Canadian pundits say. Those stupid Canadian franchises cannot accept that a franchise with no #1 defenseman is not only completely unstable, it is not going anywhere real in the playoffs. Somehow they can't learn from it. It is truly amazing that they can't learn, I will grant you. So what? You aren't rooting for those teams you are rooting for the Blues.

The Blues didn't go from being crappy to the Cup overnight, in between they were the single most dominating team in their conference for the decade in the regular season, with legitimate chances to win in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016. They drafted a #1 defenseman in 2008 and almost won the President's Trophy 4 years after finishing fourth last in the league. The floor that a true #1 defenseman gives you once he has emerged as the minutes leader by 20, 21, 22 is you will pretty much always get into the tournament and then that guy will be your best player and play the most minutes come playoffs. The trick is that you really have to understand how crucial that player is to your success.

We Blues fans have literally watched the phases of the franchise for 55 years and when they have a #1 defenseman they are competitive and almost always get in. It's 'delusional' to learn the wrong lessons. Try to learn the right lessons.

 

[Mike Liut]

I think we would have better off signing ROR, Tarasenko and Barbs to 8 year contracts last year and tried sneaking into the playoffs. Hell with the future, live for the day!!!!

 

[Linkens Mastery]

I want to do whatever helps turn us into a true contender faster and helps the team stability in the long term.

If that means a top 10 pick for a defenseman then cool, if it's using some forward prospect depth to try to fish a top 4 defenseman on a ELC/RFA contract also cool.

I just don't want to get stuck in the 15-17 overall area for multiple years where we're not good enough for the playoffs and not bad enough for a chance at those steller top 5 prospects.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

I'm also for making intelligent management decisions based on everchanging data and player availability rather than subscribing to the belief that you have to select one of two different extremist approaches to roster management in order to build a winner.

 

[Majorityof1]

Im curious. Do you think a draft pick or picks is worth tanking the Blues and their winning culture?

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Anyone who thinks the 2019 team finally winning a Cup had anything to do with the 2005-06 team tanking thirteen years prior is clearly out of their mind.

Can your team draft a generational player? Sure, if they get lucky. Does that mean wins? Ask McDavid.

Is every generational player drafted in the top 10? Nope. Some are not even in the first round. STL sports fans should know that. How many late round draft picks or guys who were bagging groceries do we need to see make the HOF before you realize that?

Maybe having a little more respect for the winning culture the Blues have cultivated for over half a century isnt a bad idea.

By the way, it was 11 years prior when the 2007-08 team was bad that our tanking led to the Cup. #4 OA pick and first Blues player to ever lift the cup, Alex Pietrangelo says hello. That pick was more important to our winning culture than any wins we would have had that year. And he wasn't a generational player. So maybe engage in good faith with these arguments rather than creating a thread to set up a straw man you think you can knock down.

How long has it been since any team won the Cup without 2 Top 5 overall picks being major contributors? Vegas (Pietrangelo and Eichel), Colorado (Makar, MAck and Landy), TB (Hedman and Stamkos), Blues (Pietrangelo and Schenn), Wash (Ovie and Backstrom), Pittsburgh (Malkin and Crosby), Chicago (Kane and Toews), Kings 2014 (Gaborik and Doughty).

So the last one without 2 top 5 picks was the 2012 Kings over 10 years ago, and they had Doughy. They also traded Jack Johnson, a top 5 pick, for Jeff Carter an important piece, mid way through the season. So how many cup winners started the season without 2 top 5 picks we'd need to go back farther. We'd need to go back really far to find a team to do it without 1 top 5 pick being a major force (best 3-4 players on the team).

We currently have one, Schenn, He was not as much of a contributor as those others listed above to our Cup run in 2018. He was the furthest forward down the list of any in the point totals for our cup run (7th) of any listed. So he is a top 5, but he is the weakest top 5, and our only one..

There are other ways to get them besides drafting . Vegas sigend Pietrangelo and traded for Eichel. But we are not as attractive a free agency destination as Vegas, and player like Eichel don't hit the market often in trade. A top 5 pick wouldn't single handedly alter our franchise, but its the easiest way to get a gamechanger. Why not hope for it in a year where we aren't going to make a lot of noise in the playoffs? 1 year of losing is not going to ruin a winning culture.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

I believe that you can't realistically 'trade your way' into a top 5 pick. If we're picking top 5 it means that the core we have in place is godawful and you basically have to tear it all down and start from scratch. There are many examples of teams who get stuck in a long-term pattern of terrible hockey when this happens, Buffalo, Edmonton, Columbus, etc. I don't see our core being bad enough for a top 5 pick to even be possible.

I still believe that given how the team has performed this season, we ride this out to see if we can find some answers to what ails the teams to see if certain players emerge, but once decision time comes, it's likely that selling at the deadline will make the most sense. From there I could see us picking anywhere in the 8-12 range.

In other words, it's a pipedream (or nightmare) to think this team is bad enough to secure a top 5 pick and if we are picking that high (we won't) we're in for a long stretch of terrible hockey.

 

[542365]

"Winning culture" is a myth. It's derived from having an abundance of good players. I don't want the Blues to tear it all down, but moving guys who don't have a future in exchange for picks and younger players is only logical. We're not winning the Cup this year. Why miss out on potentially important assets just to sneak into the playoffs and get waxed in the first round? A couple of games of playoff revenue. Building a contender will make a hell of a lot more money in the long run.

 

[BlueDream]

Im curious. Do you think a draft pick or picks is worth tanking the Blues and their winning culture?

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Anyone who thinks the 2019 team finally winning a Cup had anything to do with the 2005-06 team tanking thirteen years prior is clearly out of their mind.

Can your team draft a generational player? Sure, if they get lucky. Does that mean wins? Ask McDavid.

Is every generational player drafted in the top 10? Nope. Some are not even in the first round. STL sports fans should know that. How many late round draft picks or guys who were bagging groceries do we need to see make the HOF before you realize that?

Maybe having a little more respect for the winning culture the Blues have cultivated for over half a century isnt a bad idea.

It had nothing to do with that? So drafting Pietrangelo, Tarasenko, Schwartz, Perron, Binnington, Parayko, Barbashev, etc was irrelevant to our Cup win?



Yes, getting another top 10 pick this year would be more beneficial than getting crushed in the 1st round. Deal with it.

 

[GoldenSeal]

Trade everyone away that you can without paying picks and what's left is just talented enough to not sink below 12th. The contracts vs the lackluster playing of those players makes it IMPOSSIBLE to tank. You'll always be bad, but not bad enough to get quality picks and even if we did, our drafting side is pretty trash now. It wouldn't matter.

So, if Army is smart, he'll piece together a team good enough to make the playoffs, so the owners make their money. Army is now making decisions based on budget over good sense. I think we won't consider letting him go until the bottom totally falls off and that's a bit of a dangerous place to be with a small market team in a climate where the NHL really isn't trying to have those.

It's becoming clearer and clearer by the day that the one person we should have found a way to keep is his brother, Bill. I would have moved Army up to President, made Bill the GM and we would still be in the fight.

At this point, we've pretty much lost and we're now going to see over the next few years how much we've lost. Yes, we won a Cup and for me that's enough, but this is charting us into unsure times and while it's far too soon to worry, I'd like to be proactive and at least look at the horizon ahead of us.

 

[DeuceNine]

Im curious. Do you think a draft pick or picks is worth tanking the Blues and their winning culture?

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Anyone who thinks the 2019 team finally winning a Cup had anything to do with the 2005-06 team tanking thirteen years prior is clearly out of their mind.

Can your team draft a generational player? Sure, if they get lucky. Does that mean wins? Ask McDavid.

Is every generational player drafted in the top 10? Nope. Some are not even in the first round. STL sports fans should know that. How many late round draft picks or guys who were bagging groceries do we need to see make the HOF before you realize that?

Maybe having a little more respect for the winning culture the Blues have cultivated for over half a century isnt a bad idea.

I think plenty of teams over the years have proven that simply making it in yields a real shot at at least a CF appearance. So, that is always the goal.

 

[Blueston]

Trade everyone away that you can without paying picks and what's left is just talented enough to not sink below 12th. The contracts vs the lackluster playing of those players makes it IMPOSSIBLE to tank. You'll always be bad, but not bad enough to get quality picks and even if we did, our drafting side is pretty trash now. It wouldn't matter.

So, if Army is smart, he'll piece together a team good enough to make the playoffs, so the owners make their money. Army is now making decisions based on budget over good sense. I think we won't consider letting him go until the bottom totally falls off and that's a bit of a dangerous place to be with a small market team in a climate where the NHL really isn't trying to have those.

It's becoming clearer and clearer by the day that the one person we should have found a way to keep is his brother, Bill. I would have moved Army up to President, made Bill the GM and we would still be in the fight.

At this point, we've pretty much lost and we're now going to see over the next few years how much we've lost. Yes, we won a Cup and for me that's enough, but this is charting us into unsure times and while it's far too soon to worry, I'd like to be proactive and at least look at the horizon ahead of us.

I'm not trying to be snarky, but what has Bill done to make you say that? I like our drafts since he left better than his, before or since. And if not for drafting, then what? Having them all wear those corny suits? Because while he has done a nice job of leveraging cap space and not caring about winning into bunch of draft picks, but at some point you gotta convert that capital and they don't have much to show for it yet nor any clear franchise players. he has done fine job, but nothing exceptional that i can tell.

 

[Xerloris]

Blues (Pietrangelo and Schenn),

Forgot Jbo at #3

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

And Erik Johnson at #1.

 

[BlueDream]

And Erik Johnson at #1.

He’s only including picks that were on the team that won.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

He’s only including picks that were on the team that won.

 

[Spektre]

I wanted the Blues to tank before the season started and my mind hasn’t changed.

Teams are built through the draft. A top 5 pick could potentially speed up the rebuild process. If the Blues were drafting that high, it’s likely Buchnevich could be traded, which further bolsters the rebuild.

The Blues are doing a little better than I thought they would be doing so far. December isn’t too bad of a schedule but January could be the nail in playoff hopes.

I definitely don’t want to watch this version of the team all year and be stuck with a pick around 20.

 

[Bobby Orrtuzzo]

Having a top ten pick isn’t the end all be all…but it sure as shit doesn’t hurt (unless you just completely wiff it)

 

[MissouriMook]

I don’t know that there are a whole bunch of folks rooting for the team to be bad, and I think most would be happy if we managed to make the playoffs, but when both the eye test and the underlying metrics show that we are being outplayed in most games, I understand where the sentiment to “tank” comes from. The 5v5 xG% model that JFresh publishes on Twitter currently has us at 26th in the league. That seems pretty close to the eye test from what I’ve seen in the first quarter of the season and yet we are currently 16th in the league in points %.

Most of our “new core” isn’t even on the roster yet and guys like Thomas and Parayko, who know what it takes to win a Cup, aren’t going to be tainted by a couple more rough seasons. The worst possible outcome would be to continue to outperform our play in the standings enough to just miss the playoffs, leaving us to pick in the 15-16 range. I would much rather see us either start playing better and earn our way to 3rd in the Central or start having more games where the outcome reflects their performance and finish with the 7-10 overall pick. Finishing 7th to 10th worst this season would not concern me in terms of a winning versus losing culture, even if we missed the playoffs again next season.

 

[Majorityof1]

Forgot Jbo at #3

And Erik Johnson at #1.

He’s only including picks that were on the team that won.

I just missed them. There is no list of every Top 5 pick on a championship team. I was just rattling off the top of my head. Embarrassing that two I missed were on the Blues at one point, but it is what it is.

 

[PJJJP]

Problem with tanking right now is the rest of the west seems to be horrible as well outside of Vegas, Kings, Canucks, Jets, Stars, Avs. We behind the rest of the teams but we could also sneak into a playoff spot because everyone else sucks

 

[DatDude44]

Im curious. Do you think a draft pick or picks is worth tanking the Blues and their winning culture?

Some people on here hold onto the idea that losing and getting a top 10 draft pick means you will win a Cup down the line.

These people are delusional but there are many of them.

Anyone who thinks the 2019 team finally winning a Cup had anything to do with the 2005-06 team tanking thirteen years prior is clearly out of their mind.

Can your team draft a generational player? Sure, if they get lucky. Does that mean wins? Ask McDavid.

Is every generational player drafted in the top 10? Nope. Some are not even in the first round. STL sports fans should know that. How many late round draft picks or guys who were bagging groceries do we need to see make the HOF before you realize that?

Maybe having a little more respect for the winning culture the Blues have cultivated for over half a century isnt a bad idea.

If we don't draft Alex pietrangelo 4th overall in 2008, we don't winthe stanley cup in 2019.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

I'm not trying to be snarky, but what has Bill done to make you say that? I like our drafts since he left better than his, before or since. And if not for drafting, then what? Having them all wear those corny suits? Because while he has done a nice job of leveraging cap space and not caring about winning into bunch of draft picks, but at some point you gotta convert that capital and they don't have much to show for it yet nor any clear franchise players. he has done fine job, but nothing exceptional that i can tell.

I think he misplayed the Chychrun situation. Until he makes a couple key trades to create a balanced successful roster out of the amassed prospect capital, he hasn’t proven he is a decent GM yet. The pieces are there to do it, but he still needs to execute effectively.

 

[Blueston]

If we don't draft Alex pietrangelo 4th overall in 2008, we don't winthe stanley cup in 2019.

I call bs on that, my friend. Maybe without Petro we are worse in previous season and get higher lottery pick and … no way to tell. He was great player and indispensable piece of that team, but for the same reason that I am ok with bad moves prior bc Cup redeemed everything before as part of what it took to get there so no need to proclaim more.