Puck Watching

The Blues' preseason is over, and it wasn't pretty. They went 1-3 and scored 5 goals on 122 shots. The power play went 0-for-18. None of the projected top-six forwards scored. Luke and Nick dig into what's wrong with the offense and whether any of it should worry you before opening night in Dallas.

Then the headline: the Adam Jiricek era begins. Jim Montgomery compared the 20-year-old to Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes, and he was sent to Springfield anyway. Two days later he was back, after Logan Mailloux got hurt fighting for a teammate in Chicago. We talk about what Jiricek showed in camp, where he fits on the blue line, and whether he should stay up all year.

And the name that keeps coming up: Alexander Nikishin. Carolina's 6-foot-3 defenseman asked for a trade, skipped Hurricanes camp, and is reportedly asking for about $9 million a year. With the power play stuck at zero and the blue line banged up, is he the answer for St. Louis? And is he worth that price?

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The Blues finished last season as the hottest team in hockey and watched the playoffs from home. Luke and Nick break down what's changed.

We start with the top line. Thomas, Holloway and Snuggerud put up 92 points in 25 games after the Olympic break, and Montgomery hasn't touched the combination in camp. How high does it go?

Then the money line: Mason McTavish and Connor McMichael cost two first-rounders and Jordan Kyrou, and they're skating with Pavel Buchnevich. We get into the third line, which might be the shakiest group on the roster, and a fourth line with a real heavyweight in Ross Johnston — the first time St. Louis has had that look since Ryan Reaves.

On the back end: Broberg–Mailloux, Lindstein–Parayko and Fowler–Carlo, plus how this group stops beating itself in the D-zone. The power play was 26th and the penalty kill was 25th, and Monty told us on this show they have to be top 10 combined — so what do Vinny Prospal and Greg Cronin actually change?

Plus: is Hofer the No. 1 all the way, what does Binnington have to prove in a walk year, Snuggerud's contract year, and where the Blues land in a Central that runs through Colorado, Dallas and Minnesota. We each make our picks at the end.

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Jim Montgomery has been a Blue three times: an undrafted rookie in 1993-94, an assistant on Craig Berube's staff, and now the man running the bench. Days before training camp opens, he sat down with Luke and Nick.

He explains why Robert Thomas was "the easy choice" to become the 25th captain in franchise history. He takes apart the slow starts that have cost the Blues two seasons in a row, and tells us what camp looks like because of them. He talks about what the new additions of Mason McTavish and Connor McMichael give a second scoring line, how much Dylan Holloway's health decides the season, and which defensive pair he wants together from day one.

Plus the one everybody has asked about since last season — what actually happened in Chicago when Hofer took his time getting to the net.

0:00 Welcome, Jim Montgomery
1:16 Robert Thomas, the 25th captain in franchise history
6:44 A younger roster and a new identity
9:41 Why the Blues keep starting slow
11:58 The battle for the bottom six
14:21 Fourth-line physicality
16:32 McTavish, McMichael, and "Mikey and Mac T"
18:33 A top-heavy offense
20:10 Injuries, and what Dylan Holloway changes
22:45 The defense pairs
25:00 Special teams, Greg Cronin and Vinny Prospal
27:36 Hofer, Binnington, and two top-10 goalies
29:53 The Chicago goalie switch, explained
33:03 The Central Division
35:43 A brutal October start
37:16 What he took from Carolina and Vegas
40:13 Rapid fire: St. Louis food and golf

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Kevin Shattenkirk played 14 seasons across six NHL organizations, including 425 games in a Blues sweater, good for fifth all-time in scoring among Blues defensemen. He won a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in the 2020 bubble. Now he's a Divisional Player Representative for the NHLPA.

Luke and Nick talk with Shattenkirk about his playing career: the 2011 trade that brought him to St. Louis, life under Ken Hitchcock, the 2016 Western Conference Final run, and what it felt like watching two former teams win Cups without him. Then the conversation goes somewhere almost nobody covering the Blues beat gets to: inside the NHLPA and the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, which takes effect September 16.

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Last place on January 3rd. Champions on June 12th.

Seven years later we still can't explain it, so we stopped trying and made an episode about it instead. No grades, no cap talk — just Luke and Nick back in the 2019 vault, picking out the moments from the Cup run that still get us.

A bar in Philadelphia and a song nobody saw coming. A rookie goalie named Binnington. The streak that turned a dead season into a playoff team. Maroon in double OT. The hand pass. Game 7 in Boston, and what the room you watched it in sounded like. Plus the personal ones — [who you watched with, the moment you finally let yourself believe it].

Whether you were at the parade or you found this team afterward, this one's for you.

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Alex Pietrangelo walked for nothing. Tage Thompson became a 40-goal scorer somewhere else. And we still can't talk about the Bolduc trade without raising our voices.

Luke and Nick put ten years of St. Louis Blues front-office decisions on trial — eleven moves, no rankings, no mercy — and then run a live snake draft to decide which FIVE were the worst of the worst. The Cup Amnesty Clause is on the table, but does it apply?

🎙️ Puck Watching is a St. Louis Blues podcast hosted by brothers Luke and Nick, part of The Hockey Podcast Network. New episodes weekly.

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Three years ago, Doug Armstrong pulled the trigger. Today, we're grading everything that's happened since.

Nick and Luke break the Blues rebuild into four acts and debate the effects of each one.

Act I — The Sell-Off: The O'Reilly and Tarasenko trades that kicked it all off, and the 2023 draft trio (Dvorsky, Stenberg, Lindstein) built in their wake

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Everybody's arguing about the current roster. We're more interested in who replaces it.

Snuggerud and Dvorsky have graduated. So who's next? We go through the Blues' prospect pipeline — Justin Carbonneau after a 51-goal QMJHL year and the jump to pro, Adam Jiricek and his 59 points in Brantford, Tynan Lawrence heading to BU, and the rest of the 2026 class.

Then the segment we've been waiting to do: the sleepers. Colin Ralph — 6'4", 230, ELC signed out of Michigan State — is the defenseman this org has been trying to draft for a decade. And Love Härenstam, a 6th-round goalie with a 1.81 GAA in the Allsvenskan, goalie and rookie of the year, 6-0 for World Junior gold. Sound like a Hofer-shaped path to anyone else?

Two of these guys matter sooner than the depth chart says. We tell you which two.

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The schedule is out, Sunny re-signed, and the Blues just made the most divisive signing of the summer. Nick and Luke circle the 2026-27 dates that matter, break down one more year of Oskar Sundqvist, and don't dodge the Dillon Dube controversy — the case for, the case against, and where they land.

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The Blues landed Mason McTavish — but why was Anaheim willing to move on?

Mike from DucksNPucks joins us to break down the McTavish trade from the Ducks' side, what St. Louis is getting, and whether Anaheim will regret moving the young center. We also talk Ross Johnston signing with the Blues and the absolute chaos surrounding Leo Carlsson's massive offer sheet from Philadelphia.

Was the McTavish trade part of a bigger plan — or has Anaheim created a McProblem of its own?

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