2012 NHL Playoffs: Was the St. Louis Blues' Season a Success or Failure?

The morning after their season came to an abrupt end, the St. Louis Blues put an honorable final touch on 2011-12 with a banner on the introductory page to their Web site, reading, “Thank you fans for turning this town blue.”

Beneath that, it reads, “2011-12 Central Division Champions.”

Proceed to the main page and there is a two-minute video citing a handful of other head-turning milestones from the recently concluded campaign.

It is kind of hard for one to keep a straight face and say they saw any of that coming.

Take a backward skate by about seven months and ask any hockey enthusiast who they would favor in an eventual first-round 2012 playoff series between the Blues and San Jose Sharks.

This author, for one, would have responded with another question.

The St. Louis Blues are making the playoffs this year?

The 2011-12 Blues changed coaches and changed expectations on the fly and ultimately put in their first postseason appearance in three years and only their second since the 2004-05 lockout.

Those revised expectations were hardly met when the Central Division champions―that’s right, Central Division champions, ahead of Chicago, Detroit and Nashville―were swept by the Los Angeles Kings over the weekend.

But the only appropriate way to assess a season is by factoring in the full scope, including all 82 regular-season games and any bonus action that follows. And from training camp through at least the final week of November, there was no reason to think the Blues would be among the last 16 NHL teams standing after April 7.

That changed not long after Ken Hitchcock supplanted head coach Davis Payne on Nov. 6. The Blues were 6-7-0 at the time of the move, then started the Hitchcock era on a 4-0-2 unbeaten streak and had a 14-8-2 overall record by the end of the month.

Under Payne, the 2011-12 Blues were outscored, 35-32. Over 69 regular-season outings under Hitchcock, they went 43-15-11 and tallied a cumulative 178-130 scoring difference in their favor.

Out of seven total midseason replacements, Hitchcock’s .703 winning percentage upon replacing Payne constituted the NHL’s best turnaround of the year. All the more impressive considering he was the first of those seven replacements, meaning his Blues had the most time to cool off from his instant impact.

As it happened, they never exactly cooled off in the end. They were just extinguished by a Kings team who, upon replacing Terry Murray with Darryl Sutter in December, charged up a .622 success rate over 49 games, the second-best improvement by a midseason replacement in 2011-12.

But before that happened, which was less than a surprise given this group’s lack of playoff experience with one another and goaltender Brian Elliott’s lack of familiarity with the role of favorite, St. Louis cracked triple-digit points for the first time since 2000-01.

The final win regular-season total of 49 was the most this franchise has consumed since its Presidents' Trophy-winning campaign in 1999-2000 and the second-most in any of its 44 seasons of operation.

The ride could have ended much like that faulty follow-up to the regular-season championship in 2000, when the Blues were dislodged out of the first round by San Jose.

The current edition of the Sharks, not unlike the Washington Capitals over in the Eastern Conference, mustered the seventh seed in their bracket after a turbulent, underachieving regular season.

Having lost in back-to-back conference finals the previous two years, San Jose’s core group certainly ought to have had the requisite incentive to defy their position in the standings en route to a deep 2012 playoff run. And the Blues, ostensibly the exact inverse to the Sharks, could have been easy prey in their opening round confrontation.

Not to be. The Blues made like the 2009-10 Chicago Blackhawks and 2010-11 Vancouver Canucks by abolishing the Sharks with relative swiftness, claiming the series in five games.

With that, St. Louis merely advanced to the Western Conference semifinals for the first time in 10 years. Anything the Blues were to achieve after that would just be a bonus drizzle on syrup on their sundae.

Although they achieved precisely nothing in the subsequent en route to LA’s sweep, their foundation is indubitably in place.

With Elliott and colleague Jaraslav Halak both under contract for next season, along with at least five defensive and eight offensive regulars plus the nascent likes of Jaden Schwartz, the Blues have every cause for optimism.

Accordingly, in 2012-13, they will have no excuse to be one of the victims rather than one of the perpetrators of gridlock in the ultra-competitive Central Division.

The arrival of those privileges and responsibilities could not have been foreseen at any point through the first quarter of this season. That alone makes 2011-12 a successful season for St. Louis.