After yet another numbing loss _ 2-0 to the lagging Los Angeles Kings on Monday night at Enterprise Center _ the Blues sent coach Mike Yeo out to address the media one last time.
One last time Yeo had no new answers for his team's failure. One last time he offered no new ideas to turn things around.
One last time his exasperation and apparent resignation demonstrated why he simply had to go.
"We'll look at the tape," Yeo said. "We've been bouncing the lines around a lot, I don't know that's going to change a whole lot. We'll try a couple of different, you know, we'll try, I'm sure, a couple of different looks there next game, whether it's on the power play, whether it's five-on-five. You can try to mix things there a little bit.
"We can look little bit at video. We have to make sure that we don't slip away from the defensive game, But offensively I feel like we can execute better to get up the ice, to be more of a threat, to be quicker, to maybe get our 'D' more involved. I think in the offensive zone maybe we can get our 'D' a little bit more involved. But again, teams are defending all that stuff right now. You've to find a way to get some traffic in front of the net and create off that as well."
Then Yeo returned to the Blues' inner sanctum before the team announced his firing. Assistant coach Craig Berube replaced him on an interim basis with home-and-home games against powerful Nashville up next, followed by a game against the high-flying Winnipeg Jets.
Wish Berube luck with that immediate challenge, because the Blues became the NHL's biggest enigma on Yeo's watch.
After a fast start last season, the Blues lagged for months. Their late-season spasm of life raised some hopes, as did their flurry of aggressive offseason moves that gave them a new-and-improved look.
Expectations for this team soared, and rightfully so.
Yeo knew he needed a fast start to remain employed, but the team staggered to a terrible start instead. Yeo knew he needed a dramatic turnaround to save his job, but no such reversal occurred.
So now general manager Doug Armstrong gets one more chance to hire a coach. This will likely be his last chance to make a change before he gets clipped himself, so he better get it right.
Unless this team somehow catches fire under Berube, Armstrong must look outside for a new voice. After all, Berube was here for last season's months-long lull and this season's dreadful start, so his fingerprints are all over this failure too.
Fans are clamoring for Joel Quenneville's return, but Coach Q is raking in $6 million from the Blackhawks this season and next after his termination in Chicago. He can hold out for a monstrous deal in terms of dollars, length and even power. Securing him would be a heavy, heavy lift for this franchise.
Change is also in order for the team's leadership structure. Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo appears to have no answers as captain, as least none that he is willing to share in public.
Somebody else, perhaps hard-working newcomer Ryan O'Reilly, should take that responsibility so Pietrangelo can concentrate on regaining his game. As the team's frustration mounted this season, Pietrangelo's play deteriorated.
While there is no reason to drop a bomb on this talented roster, some change is necessary. As currently constructed, this team has no chemistry.
While projected also-rans like Buffalo, Montreal and Ottawa have played spirited hockey this season, the Blues just sort of wandered into their campaign and never really got going.
This team has no belief, no collective will to win. While it takes time for so many new players to come together, the Blues have drifted for one-fourth of the season to endanger their playoff hopes in the hypercompetitive Central Division.
While this team didn't flat-out quit under Yeo, it remained strangely out of sorts.
Early on it was easy to blame goaltender Jake Allen for the team's failure, since he was unable to make timely saves to cover up the blunders being made in front of him. More recently Allen allowed just one goal in each of his last three starts, only to lose two of them when the Blues were shut out.
Injuries to defensemen Carl Gunnarsson and Robert Bortuzzo haven't helped matters. Yeo had little choice but to lean on aging Jay Bouwmeester, who appears to be a shell of his former self while coming back from hip surgery.
Also problematic are the injuries suffered by forwards Alexander Steen, Patrick Maroon and Jaden Schwartz _ a should-be star who has never gotten on track this season.
But those casualties should have allowed young players like Jordan Schmaltz, Sammy Blais and Nikita Soshnikov to bring young legs and hunger to the mix. But they, too, have been become stuck in the team's morass.
So change has started and change must continue. On paper, this team has lots of talent. In the franchise ledgers, its bulging payroll bumps up right against the NHL salary cap.
Team ownership has done its part by investing in talent. Now it's up to Armstrong, the players and whomever ends up coaching this team to save this season.
