The 2019 NHL cinderella story goes to the St. Louis Blues!
They went from being last in the league and firing their head coach to winning the first Stanley Cup in franchise history.
Highlights and quotes from an ESPN article by Greg Wyshynski
Keys to their success:
1. New coach: “Then they get the new coach, Berube. You gotta love him. He's old-school, I think. He played over 1,000 games, but he had to work every year. He was the kind of player we were. You went out there and you worked and you learned the game and you understood. You made the mistakes. You corrected them." And then you forgot about them.
2. Character: "Every guy on our team has a ton of character," forward Zach Sanford said after Game 3. "We're a really close group, and we all have each other's backs. A tough loss like that, I think [on] a lot of teams, a lot of guys would have started throwing each other around the bus, blaming other people, and doing this and that. With this group it's all just boosting each other and having each other's back."
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3. Culture: Buried in the franchise's DNA, obscured by decades of mediocrity, are the building blocks of a champion. The legacy of the team was built by the generations of Blues players.
4. Family: from former Blues players; franchise employees; and fans like Lilia Anderson, who has hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a disease with which only 15 other children in the world have been diagnosed.
5. Hit the reset button, like in a video game. Each time adversity hit, the Blues hit the reset button. "Things don't really seem to faze us," captain Alex Pietrangelo said.
6. And a short memory. Which, in the end, is why the Blues won the Stanley Cup. Every loss was forgotten. Every injustice was dismissed. The burden of 52 years of futility didn't ultimately crush them.
Everyone loves an underdog! Remember the ingredients necessary to face adversity and to come together to perform your best.
Article link: https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/26962384/how-blues-hit-reset-beat-game