Where do the 2025 St. Louis Blues go from here?

It's hard to know what to make of the St. Louis Blues.

Under Drew Bannister, their first coach from this past season, they were not a very good team. Sub-.500, bad-to-horrible underlying numbers, "team in crisis" vibes. Under current coach Jim Montgomery, they were a mile above .500, with solid if unspectacular underlying numbers, and "this team is a handful" vibes. That's obviously why general manager Doug Armstrong fired Bannister just 22 games into his new hire; Montgomery has a track record of getting the absolute most out of his teams in a way that very few coaches do. He's the kind of difference maker you fire your old coach to hire.

But all the success they had in the regular season belied those middling underlyings — 51 percent of the expected goals versus 55 percent of the actual goa