MARYLAND
HEIGHTS, Mo. — To no one’s surprise, Jim Montgomery saw some good,
and some not-so-good to open St. Louis Blues training camp for the
2025-26 season.
The
Blues coach, opening his first full camp after he was hired Nov. 25,
2024, and his coaching staff put two groups on the ice for the first
time Thursday, will do so again Friday before opening preseason play
Saturday against the Dallas Stars.
“Pretty
good overall,” Montgomery said.
“Intensity was good. Pace was slow in a couple of drills, but
really good in other drills when we had to really battle each other.
I liked the way our second and third effort is naturally being there
on the first day. Execution was not where we would like it, but you
kind of expect that on Day 1.”
Montgomery
and the Blues went on an unprecedented run last year that saw the
team reach the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in three
seasons, highlighted by a franchise-record 12-game winning streak to
get in as the second wild card before falling to the Winnipeg Jets in
seven games of the first round.
“It’s
great that ‘Monty’ is going to have a full training camp to get
us ready,” Blues
general manager Doug Armstrong said as he enters his final season as
GM.
“I think one of the things you want to be careful against is when
you finish as strong as you did, you think that that is going to be a
natural carryover. One of the things you understand over time is like
[Logan]
Mailloux
doesn’t care how we played, [Pius]
Suter
doesn’t care how we played, [Nick]
Bjugstad
doesn’t care how well we played at the end. We have to build our
own team again. We have to start that foundation. There’s a lot of
things that the players can remember and learn from from last year,
but to think that they can replicate it by just showing up, hockey
doesn’t work that way. The NHL doesn’t work that way. Just the
understanding of when I look at the Central Division (and) how strong
that is right now, we have to be ready to go at the start of the
season. It’s going to be a battle every night. When you’re coming
from behind, you can sneak up on teams. This year, hopefully we
proved to some teams that we’re a capable opponent and we’ll get
their best game and they’ll get ours and we’ll see how we fit.”
For
Montgomery, he was able to adjust and implement on the fly in the
middle of the season. How he gets to begin fresh, anew in putting in
place what needs to transpire.
“Competing
is going to be No. 1,” he said.
“Playing with pace, being selfless, things that gave us a lot of
success, but we need to ramp it up a couple levels. You’ve got to
get off to a great start, so camp, if you don’t have a camp, you
don’t get off to a good start. Today was a good Day 1. I expect
them to be better tomorrow.”
Suter
(two years, $8.25 million) and Bjugstad (two years, $3.75 million)
were the top two free agent signings this past summer.
“Just
the overall depth it gives us, right,” Montgomery said. “Both of
them real smart, veteran players. You can tell already they
understood how we want to play. They were making good, defensive
plays and real good offensive support plays.”
Mailloux,
a defenseman acquired from the Montreal Canadiens for Zack Bolduc,
will get his first big chance to earn his way onto an NHL roster.
“He
was known as an offensive defenseman; that’s what he’s been his
whole career, and I can see the shot, I can see the instincts,”
Montgomery said. “But what was really impressive was the defensive
stick. He got his stick on a lot of pucks, ended a lot of plays,
killed plays. That was nice to see.
“I
think that’s what his role was last year was to work on that
(defense) and you can tell. He’s a conscientious, good teammate
because he got better. His stick, we watched clips of him and it was
very evident in the American (Hockey) League that he was doing a real
good job with his stick.”
And
veteran Milan Lucic, invited in to camp on a PTO, comes with
familiarity and a chance.
“He’s
got to win a job,” Montgomery said. “I know that sounds simple,
but he’s got to be good 200 feet, he’s got to know what we’re doing
defensively. There was one rush drill where he took it wide and like
that was NHL speed. He took it hard to the net. Those are things that
we think, as a team, we need to be better at than last year and maybe
he’s someone that can help us.”
Added
Blues captain Brayden Schenn on Lucic: “He’s a guy that you want
on your team. He can control the bench, control the room. He’s a
guy when you have on your team, guys know he’s out there. That’s
an important guy you need in your locker room and on your team. I’m
looking forward – I think we all are – to have him. Everyone
speaks very highly of him. He’s a heck of a teammate.”
As
the Blues begin their journey to the Oct. 9 season-opener against the
Minnesota Wild at home, does Game 7 against the Jets still sting and
should it serve as a motivator?
“I
think it’s motivation because we don’t like the way we finished
that game,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t advance, we should have
advanced, but we’re not laboring it, we’re going to learn from it
and we’re going to get better. That’s our mindset and starting
off camp right now, we’re not thinking Game 7, we’re thinking
about getting off to a great start this year.”
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MARYLAND
HEIGHTS. Mo. — There’s
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MARYLAND
HEIGHTS, Mo. — Don’t
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beyond grateful to be healthy and skating 100 percent for the first
time since what turned out to be an ugly injury that derailed a
fantastic first season in the Gateway City.
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