Craig Berube made his living the hard way during his 1,054-game NHL playing career.
He threw body checks. He won board battles. He sacrificed his body while crashing the net. He stood up for his teammates and fought the toughest brawlers of his era.
Year after year, Berube shouldered the most punishing assignments for the greater good of his team.
Now he must do the same thing as head coach.
As Blues general manager Doug Armstrong continues moving out established players to retool his team on the fly, Berube must keep the holdovers working together so the process can go more smoothly.
This is a difficult task, but Berube did not build his long playing and coaching career by ducking challenges.
“It’s not an easy thing that anybody is going through,” Berube noted after the Blues fell 4-1 to the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday. “I know that. But at the same time, I have to coach and do what I have to do.”
So the Blues must soldier on. They shrugged off the subtraction of Vladimir Tarasenko and Niko Mikkola and ran their post-break winning streak to three games.
But they felt the full weight of their predicament after Armstrong traded well-respected captain Ryan O’Reilly and hard-working veteran Noel Acciari to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Blues didn’t show much life during their loss to the Avalanche Saturday, then they rolled over during their embarrassing 7-2 loss at Ottawa the next day. As Berube grimly noted afterward, "It was not much to look at."
Their path won’t get any easier. As the Blues moved on to Carolina to face the powerful Hurricanes Tuesday, Armstrong continued fielding trade inquiries on forward Ivan Barbashev.
Several teams are targeting Barbashev as a depth scorer who can play in all situations. Armstrong would like to collect a few more good draft picks and perhaps a prospect for him.
More change is certain ahead of the March 3 trade deadline. Additional upheaval could come during the offseason, when Armstrong may ask veterans with contractual no-trade protection if they are open to moving.
Those likelihoods aren’t in the back of the mind of Blues players as they finish out their doomed season. They are in the front of mind — and that unsettling uncertainty showed through over the weekend.
But this is what happens when a veteran team fails. Blues ownership has asked Armstrong to fix things. He got the go-ahead to clear out some older players and start retooling with younger veterans and some prospects.
That mandate left Berube and his assistant coaches trying to make the best of a bad situation.
The Chief concern is that the reeling Blues could become so downtrodden that the pervasive negativity could damage the development of younger players. Armstrong cited that concern earlier this season while explaining his desire to shelter prospects at the team’s successful AHL affiliate in Springfield, Mass.
Armstrong also served fair warning that he knows the difference between winning and quitting and he will judge the Blues accordingly.
So, yeah, Berube is on the spot.
His leaders failed to maintain the team spirit that propelled the team to 109 points last season and a first-round playoff victory over the Minnesota Wild. Some of those leaders are gone as a result.
Now Berube must appeal to the surviving veterans to show greater character and more personal pride. He must convince them to redouble their efforts.
You will hear a lot of talk about how “They’re professionals, they’re getting paid well, they just need to do their job” through the rest of the season. But that’s easier asked than delivered.
Hockey is a physically and emotionally demanding. The NHL plays at a full-tilt pace from shift to shift. Pretty good effort doesn’t cut it these days and half-stepping it, as the Blues did in Ottawa, leads to ugly outcomes.
To succeed, teams need full collective commitment. They need total buy-in. The Blues lacked that for whatever reason this season. Now they are nearing “What’s the point?” territory with Armstrong clearing out players.
There is no greater coaching challenge than elevating a team that falls into that mindset.
Had Armstrong believed there was a real chance to salvage this season and make a playoff run, he might have changed coaches despite his earlier vote of confidence for Berube.
But the magnitude of failure convinced him to essentially fire the team and keep the coach, at least for now. So Berube, who is under contract through the 2024-25 season, has the unenviable task of guiding this team in flux.
If he can somehow keep the team competitive through the transition, he could earn another contract on the other side. If Berube does just a middling job rallying the troops, then he will last long enough to set the table for the next coach.
And if Berube allows the team to succumb to its trying conditions, then Armstrong may decide to make still another painful change sooner than he hoped.
This is where things stand. We don’t know if Berube can meet his daunting challenge, his history tells us he won’t back down from it.
