[Stares blankly]
Holy crap, they actually pulled it off.
UPDATE: Here's the local write-up.
UPDATE: It's now Thursday morning and I still don't get it.
UPDATE: I know somebody who's going to be buying a new car.
UPDATE: Backstory. The St. Louis Blues were never supposed to have existed at all.
In 1967, when the NHL expanded from six teams to twelve, the Blues were the last of the new six. In fact, that franchise was supposed to have gone to Baltimore. Only reason it didn't was the Wirtz family who owned the Chicago Black Hawks.
The Hawks ran a Central Hockey League farm team called the St. Louis Braves (when I was a kid, I loved listening to those guys on the radio) and also owned the St. Louis Arena which was a dump. Truth to tell, it basically remained a dump until the day it was knocked down.
So whichever Wirtz was running the show then approached a local insurance executive and Democratic Party power broker named Sid Salomon Jr. with a proposition. Take the Arena off my hands and I'll get you into the NHL.
Salomon Jr. was initially skeptical but his son, Sid III, seems to have talked him into it. And the rest is history.
UPDATE: Worst to first. SI's write-up.
The Game 7 victory marked the city’s first Cup since the Blues’ inception in 1967, and it came as the conclusion to something like the perfect sports story. The team was the worst in the NHL on the morning of Jan. 3, a date that’s loomed large in St. Louis’s consciousness this spring—since the 11-game winning streak in January and February that vaulted the team up the standings, since it found itself improbably the No. 3 seed in the Central Division at the start of the playoffs. It’s been a sprint all spring, from worst to first for this team that was so recently left for dead.
UPDATE: The Blues flew this very sick little girl and devoted Blues fan into Boston to watch the final with her heroes. Aftermath.
UPDATE: First title for the Raptors, first title for the Blues. Same season. Makes you think.
Holy crap, they actually pulled it off.
UPDATE: Here's the local write-up.
UPDATE: It's now Thursday morning and I still don't get it.
UPDATE: I know somebody who's going to be buying a new car.
UPDATE: Backstory. The St. Louis Blues were never supposed to have existed at all.
In 1967, when the NHL expanded from six teams to twelve, the Blues were the last of the new six. In fact, that franchise was supposed to have gone to Baltimore. Only reason it didn't was the Wirtz family who owned the Chicago Black Hawks.
The Hawks ran a Central Hockey League farm team called the St. Louis Braves (when I was a kid, I loved listening to those guys on the radio) and also owned the St. Louis Arena which was a dump. Truth to tell, it basically remained a dump until the day it was knocked down.
So whichever Wirtz was running the show then approached a local insurance executive and Democratic Party power broker named Sid Salomon Jr. with a proposition. Take the Arena off my hands and I'll get you into the NHL.
Salomon Jr. was initially skeptical but his son, Sid III, seems to have talked him into it. And the rest is history.
UPDATE: Worst to first. SI's write-up.
The Game 7 victory marked the city’s first Cup since the Blues’ inception in 1967, and it came as the conclusion to something like the perfect sports story. The team was the worst in the NHL on the morning of Jan. 3, a date that’s loomed large in St. Louis’s consciousness this spring—since the 11-game winning streak in January and February that vaulted the team up the standings, since it found itself improbably the No. 3 seed in the Central Division at the start of the playoffs. It’s been a sprint all spring, from worst to first for this team that was so recently left for dead.
UPDATE: The Blues flew this very sick little girl and devoted Blues fan into Boston to watch the final with her heroes. Aftermath.
UPDATE: First title for the Raptors, first title for the Blues. Same season. Makes you think.
5 comments:
Congratulations. Go get roaring drunk.
Your robot-buster is really out-of-sorts this morning.
Thanks. Still having trouble wrapping my mind around it.
Gee, I wish O'Reilly could have scored like that in Buffalo.
Binnington is a monster. I thought he was going to shut out game 7. Frankly, the Bruins looked like they quit after the 3rd goal. The hockey gods don't tolerate that.
Congrats to you and the Blues. They won fair & square.
As a side note, I was listening to Howie Carr yesterday, and he phone-interviewed the owner of a Cape Cod seafood restaurant that found a rare blue lobster in their last delivery. He is planning to donate it to the St. Louis Aquarium. Blue lobsters are a one-in-2-million occurrence. He had named the lobster "Baby Blue," but Howie suggested that he name it "Stanley."
Thanks, Myrmidon. That's really cool. And it wouldn't have killed me if you guys had won again because it would have been the best season the Blues ever had. A Cup final and actually winning some games. And it would have gotten David Backes a ring. He played here a lot of years and he's a really good guy.
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