The Blues and their fans have a few new things to look forward to coming into next season. They’ll have new expectations as they hope to make the playoffs for the first time since the 2008-09 season; and their first playoff win since 2004. They’ll have new veterans on the team to help bring success back to the Gateway City. They’ll even have a new slogan.
Most importantly from a leadership perspective, they’ll have a new captain leading them onto the ice.
There has been a vacancy at captain ever since the Blues traded away Eric Brewer to the Tampa Bay Lightning in middle of last season. They finished the season with three alternate captains sharing the leadership responsibilities—Alex Steen, Barret Jackman, and David Backes. Interestingly enough, the Blues aren’t sure if they’re going to pick one traditional captain or if they’re going to go with a group of rotating captains. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jeremy Rutherford spoke to Blues GM Doug Armstrong about the captain situation for next season:“We want to get the input of some of the other people in our organization - the coaches, some people in our management staff - and we’ll have that decision by the first day of training camp… whether we go with a group of players that will make up a leadership group or we name a captain.
“We’re further ahead that we were at the end of the season, but we’re not at the point where we’ve solidified what we want to do, and that’s something that we’ll spend the next three weeks discussing.”
Earlier this offseason, we here at Pro Hockey Talk looked at the Blues captaincy situation and explained that promoting David Backes seems like a no-brainer. But if the Blues were to go with a rotating situation similar to the Minnesota Wild under Jacques Lemaire, the list of candidates gets a little murkier. Would they want to go with the current group of leaders (Jackman, Steen, Backes) who have been with the Blues for a longer period of time? Would they want to go with newcomers who look like they could be future cornerstones like Alex Pietrangelo or Chris Stewart? Would they want to give the “C” to a veteran, free agent acquisition like Jason Arnott or Jaime Langenbrunner? Any one of those guys is capable of wearing the “A” over the course of the season—and each is capable of wearing the “C” for a period of time as well.
It gets into a much deeper debate about the role of a captain on an NHL team. Most coaches and general managers will tell you that they expect leadership from every member of the team—they don’t need a letter on their jersey to set a good example. From that standpoint, rotating captains puts the responsibility on the team as a whole to hold their teammates accountable. In theory, it makes sense.
On the other hand, there are those who think a team needs a strong leader who is the acknowledged leader in the locker room. He’s the guy who, whether the team has given him the captaincy or not, has the undeniable respect of his teammates. It’s more of a “buck stops here” attitude—a player who will face his teammates and the media when things aren’t going well. A player who can approach the coach and management when things aren’t going well and some sort of change needs to be made. In short: an undisputed leader.
The Blues will use the rest of the offseason to figure out their captaincy situation. What do you think would be better for St. Louis? Should they make a guy like David Backes the permanent captain or should they go with rotating captains?