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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The Blues made major noise at the NHL Draft, and we’re breaking it all down. On this episode of Puck Watching, we recap the Blues’ first-round selections of Tynan Lawrence and Maddox Dagenais, two center prospects who add even more depth down the middle. We also dive into the blockbuster move for Mason McTavish, what the Blues gave up to Anaheim, and whether this is the kind of swing that changes the organization’s future. Plus, we discuss the biggest question coming out of draft weekend: do the Blues now have too many centers? With Lawrence, Dagenais, McTavish, McMichael, Dvorsky, Thomas and others in the mix, could St. Louis use that depth as trade bait? We also touch on the later-round picks, the decision to wait on defensemen, and what this all means heading into free agency.

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The NHL Draft is finally here, and the Blues hold three first-round picks (11, 15, and 29) in what could be the most important draft weekend of the franchise's recent era. This week on Puck Watching, we break down the latest rumors, debate whether Alex Steen should make a blockbuster move up the board for Ivar Stenberg, and discuss the top prospects who could be targets for St. Louis.

Before the draft talk, we react to the shocking trade that sent Brady Tkachuk to Florida, joining brother Matthew on a Panthers team that may have become the NHL's newest superteam. We also discuss the additions of assistant coaches Vinny Prospal and Greg Cronin and what they could bring to Jim Montgomery's staff.

Plus, our favorite draft targets, sleeper prospects, trade-up scenarios, and final predictions ahead of a massive week for the Blues.

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