Will The Blues Way Work?

from Stu Hackel of Red Light, It’s commonly accepted that the draft is the best way to start building a hockey club that will be good for a while. If you develop a core group of talented youngsters together, they can form the bonds and chemistry that make them want to play for each other. Maybe you augment that core with some veterans to help guide the kids and things will take off from there. It also helps if your team has floundered for a while so you can collect lots of draft picks. That’s the theory, anyway. In recent times, the theory worked for the Penguins and Blackhawks, who both won the Stanley Cup. They’re hardly alone in trying it. The Capitals, Islanders, Oilers and Avalanche have also taken the draft route with varying degrees of success and are at different stages of progress. Right in that group are the St. Louis Blues. They’ve earned plaudits all around for collecting young talent while preaching patience as the players grew. They’ve also made as many missteps as ...