I was watching “Shawshank Redemption” Monday night for the umpteen-thousandth time – because it was on … again … and it truly is one of the best movies of the last 40 years or so.
Of course, by “watching” it, I mean that I came across it while flipping around during a break between periods in the St. Louis Blues game. So I kept it on for a little while, then went back to it here and there during other breaks, or times when the Blues play got so frustrating that I just had to change the channel for a moment.
Truth be told, I’ve probably watched the movie uninterrupted, from beginning to end, only a handful of times. The opening few minutes aren’t nearly as engrained in my brain as the last few, but those final moments may be tied for first with “Dead Poets Society” on my list of all-time great movie endings.
So anyway, while I’m watching, it gets to the scene where Andy (played by Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman) are talking in the yard, right after Andy finished serving two months of solitary confinement. At perhaps his lowest point in the movie, Andy is imagining where he would go if he ever gets out of jail, and when Red implores him to stop wasting his time on “pipe dreams,” Andy says a brilliant line:
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice really: get busy living, or get busy dying.”
Should the Blues Continue on Current Path or Build For the Future?
In that moment, with the Blues on my mind, it got me to wondering which direction the team is going to choose: get busy living, or get busy dying. Because as things currently stand, it sure feels like doing nothing but continuing to follow this path is a one-way ticket to another year of an NHL death in the “mushy middle,” a place that Blues fans know all too well.
Too proud and competitive to bottom out and secure elite draft talent. Maybe scratch and claw enough to fight for a Wild Card spot, but realistically, not strong enough to seriously contend for a Stanley Cup, unless future assets are traded in an ill-conceived effort to acquire immediate help. In the end, stuck again with mid-level picks in the draft.
Or the Blues could choose to get busy living, which in this case would require a patient approach and a long-term outlook. Taking one step back now in favor of three steps ahead down the road. Hopefully it won’t be like 20 years of digging a hole through a wall with a rock hammer, but getting from where the team is now to where it wants to be will take more than a quick fix.
It may not be a popular decision. It may mean a season or more of maddeningly inconsistent hockey that can be hard to watch, but aren’t we getting that already? Besides – and here’s the most important part – this could be the ideal time for the Blues to take such a difficult step.
NHL Landscape and Deep Draft May Support Efforts Toward a Quick Rebuild
The general consensus is that the 2026 NHL draft is very deep, with a strong group of high-end talent, especially among the top four or five players. If ever the Blues were going to benefit from drafting out of an early slot, this might be that time. Which also speaks to the strategy of accumulating extra picks, and the current landscape of the league may have several teams willing to trade picks, as well as prospects, in what is shaping up to be a wild fight for postseason positioning.
U.S. Thanksgiving traditionally provides a reliable snapshot of who is likely to make up the playoff field come spring, but in 2025-26, the vast majority of teams will be sitting down to a turkey dinner spiced by realistic Stanley Cup hopes.
The situation in the Eastern Conference is particularly nuts, with every team but two sitting in the 24-to-30-point range. Washington and Boston currently hold the two Wild Card spots with 26 points, while five teams sit just one point behind, most of them with a game or two in hand.
The Western Conference is only slightly less muddled. Vegas and Utah are in Wild Card position with 27 points, followed by San Jose and Edmonton at 25 points, Winnipeg and Chicago at 24 points.
As for the Blues, at 7-10-6 for 20 points, they are closer to last-place Nashville (16 points) than to a playoff berth.
Past Successful Turnarounds Should Not Fuel Hopes For a Similar Story in 2025-26
Some of you out there may be yelling about last season, the late push that vaulted the Blues into the final postseason spot and nearly took them into at least the second round of the playoffs. Others might be harkening back to the magical 2018-19 team that went from last place in early January to the Stanley Cup title.
But both of those incredible accomplishments happened thanks to runs of success that had never been seen before. Ever. A franchise-best winning streak last season, a Disney movie-like turnaround in 2019. It was once-in-a-lifetime stuff that just cannot be used to argue for staying the course.
So why not usher in the next era of Blues hockey?
Find trade partners willing to swap valuable future assets for Jordan Kyrou, Justin Faulk, Brayden Schenn. Hold difficult conversations with veteran players on partial or full no-trade clauses like Cam Fowler, Pavel Buchnevich, Colton Parayko, Jordan Binnington. I’m not suggesting that I want all of those players to be moved, but how many times in recent seasons have we watched the team sleepwalk through yet another game and lamented, “Well, too bad you can’t fire the players?”
We have the coach in place for the foreseeable future. We have an exciting crop of young players who are just starting to reach the NHL level, with more on the way. And with Alexander Steen taking over as the team’s general manager next summer, there’s already a transition in the works. Why not take advantage of what’s happening in the league, and what’s coming up in the draft, to jumpstart the rebuild that nobody wants, but the team seems to need.
Sure, it might feel like we’re Andy Dufresne, all swimming through a mile of … excrement. But just think about how clean we may come out on the other side.