Will This New Year Be A Better One?
The Blues still haven’t recovered from their improbable loss in Game 7 at Winnipeg last May.
Well, it’s a new year, at least the calendar tells us. But sports-wise, will this new year be a better one? That remains to be seen and, frankly, the signs aren’t encouraging.
Certainly, 2025 ranks among the worst sports years ever in St. Louis. A lot of ground gets covered in that statement, a lot of interpretation. Or, to put a Bluegrass spin on it, these past months have been a bit like the lonesome sound of a train going by. Makes you want to stop and cry.
The Cardinals won 78 games last summer. They were 19 games shy of first place in their division and missed a postseason for the third consecutive year. Most stunningly, the team finished 19th among 30 MLB teams in attendance. Busch Stadium was emptier than a Somali day care facility. “Cardinals Nation” was like a rogue state, occupying just 168 more seats per game than “Reds Nation,” i.e.Cincinnati.
Now that’s lonesome.
However, where baseball is concerned, if you want to get nuts, let’s get nuts. The 1897 St. Louis edition was 29-102, settling 63½ games out of first. Pitching ace Red Donahue managed 10 wins, which is no small feat on a 29-win team. Donahue hurled a staggering 348 innings and led the big leagues with 38 complete games.
Mind you, he also led with 35 losses, so it’s hard to say if the complete games were a positive or negative.
What could be worse than 1897? How about two awful teams in one season? During 1910, St. Louis’ National League Cardinals were 63-90, while the American League Browns finished 47-107. The Browns were shutout 25 times that summer and finished 26-51 at home. Combined, the two teams were 97 games removed from their postseason aspirations.
But introducing the Browns to this conversation is problematic. You’re talking about a team that lost 678 games over it’s last seven seasons. Rising tides might lift all boats, but sinking boats tend to plummet all tides … or something like that.
That said, this isn’t just a baseball broadsheet. What made 2025 so lousy was a conglomerate of sports disappointments.
STL City finished 8-8-14 in ’25, apparently. It’s a little hard to distinguish when the MLS seasons start and end - this may just be the All-Star break. Full disclosure, this correspondent has never fully embraced the City movement. Kind of feels like City it's to big-league soccer, what the Battlehawks are to professional football, not the NFL but a colorful facsimile thereof.
Hockey seasons cross two calendars, so you have to be flexible. The 2024-25 Blues campaign was like an anxiety disorder - first mediocre, then terrific, then catastrophic. The season ended in a paralyzing manner. The Blues fell behind 2-0 in a playoff series with the Jets, rallied to 3-3, then had Game 7 at Winnipeg tucked away - a two-goal lead with less than two minutes remaining.
Shockingly, they surrendered two goalie-pull scores in the waning moments and lost in double-overtime. It was like watching Shutter Island.
The team has been catatonic ever since, awake but unresponsive. Expected to contend this winter, they have sleep-walked through the early months. Last spring, they had a 112-game winning streak. This winter, they’ve been unable to win three games in a row.
Where’s Harry York when you need him?
But the limbo bar for hockey hardship in this town goes considerably lower. The current club won its 19th game last Friday. And with it, it officially surpassed the 1978-79 Blues edition that finished 18-50-12. That said, Friday’s win was a shootout version, not regulation. There were not shootout or overtimes in 1978-79.
That ’78-79 squad was captained by Barry Gibbs. Not the Stayin’ Alive singer, but Barry Gibbs - with an “s” - and a minus-41 in ’78-79. But let’s not be hard on “Gibbsie.” After all, Garry Unger scored 30 goals and still was minus-45. The team was minus-421 overall.
Somewhere, Ken Hitchcock is convulsing.
And while we’re in 1979, which is a bellringer for bad Sports in St. Louis, the NFL Cardinals were still here at the time. Despite rookie Otis Anderson’s 1,605 rushing yards, the “Big Red” finished 5-11. They were coached by Oklahoma legend Bud Wilkinson, who had been out of football for 15 years when he agreed to smudge his legacy and work for Bill Bidwill’s star-crossed club. After going 6-10 in 1978, the distinguished Wilkinson was fired for a 3-10 start in ’79.
If we expand to colleges, ’79 also was tough on St. Louis U. The basketball Billikens were 10-17 in 1978-79, then 12-15 in 1979-80. For Missouri, it was a mixed bag, finishing a 13-15 campaign in 1979, starting a 25-6 that winter. On Dec. 21, 1979, the Tigers beat the Billikens 77-75 at the Arena, you can take that either way.
Yeah, scout’s honor. SLU vs. Missouri used to be a thing.
We could go on. Lou Henson’s Illinois basketball team was decent in ‘79, but the Illinois football team was 2-8-1, crawling through the 6-24-3 era of Gary Moeller. Missouri finished 7-5 in ’79 under football coach Warren Powers, closing with a win over South Carolina in the Hall of Fame Bowl. However, the season included heartbreaking losses - by 3 points to No. 2 Nebraska and 2 points to No. 7 Oklahoma.
See, Missouri used to have these opponents known as “rivals” - celebrated, traditional, emotionally-engaging rivals. Now it has the “Battle Line Rivalry” with that bitter, historical nemesis Arkansas. It’s “one for the ages,” if your age is 3-and-under.
In 2025, Mizzou finished with a similar 8-5 record, but how it got there was quite different. The Tigers started with five consecutive home wins - against a series of paper mache opponents like 0-12 Massachusetts. Then, faster than you can say “contract extension,” Eli Drinkwitz’ juggernaut dropped five of the last eight, bottoming out with a 13-7 Gator Bowl loss to Virginia.
In the end, the ’25 Tigers lost all five of their games with ranked opponents. And, the bowl bid notwithstanding, they did not beat a single team with a winning record.
“M-I-Z … O-My-God!”
You can’t pin a 2025 hangover on Illinois football. Bret Bielema’s Illini was 9-4, concluding with a thrilling Music City Bowl win over Tennessee.
The comparisons are fun to consider. Bottom line: there have been some forgettable years in St. Louis Sports, and 2025 deserves a seat at the table. But will 2026 be any better, the signs suggest otherwise.
Already, the Cardinals have moved their top starter from last season, their leader in home runs and RBIs and they’re rapidly depreciating third baseman. Reportedly, they also are fielding offers for Brandon Donovan, an All-Star and versatile contributor, who has committed the sin of reaching prime earning and performance years.
In return, the club is collecting prospects, suspects and rejects. How that pans out this summer is anyone’s guess. The philosophy might be sensible, with a possible lockout looming. The direction may be sound, the future might be bright. But on the existing sheet of paper, with spring training looming, it’s hard to project the ’26 roster as “improved.”
Where the Blues are concerned, it’s being suggested that management is in depth-charge mode, open to disemboweling the current roster.
This group was supposed to be a coat of prime, a bridge to bigger and better things, a place where promising newcomers could blossom. Now it looks like a place where Stanley Cup dreams go to die. When you have a relatively young core, and the best of them are not your best players on a nightly basis, then what?
Several members of this group have long-term contracts and no-trade language. All of them - every single one - is having a poor season. That trifecta turns a trade market into a Society of St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. For reference, see Nolan Arenado to Arizona, along with $31 million.
The answer for most NHL teams in this predicament, historically, is a coaching change. But that off ramp seems to be closed. Jim Montgomery just got here, and he has several more years on his contract. It's hard to believe Montgomery could go from savior to satan in a matter of a few months. He had this team humming last spring. Now it can’t carry a tune ... or a lead ... or a winning streak.
This has to do with personality and leadership, more specifically, a lack thereof. Over recent years, for various reasons, attrition has taken Alex Pietrangelo, Ryan O’Reilly, Tyler Bozak, David Perron, Alexander Steen, Carl Gunnarsson, Jay Bouwmeester, Robert Bortuzzo, Jake Allen and Pat Maroon. Last season’s rebounding club included Radek Faksa, Gary Suter and Nick Leddy.
Add it all up, regardless of what those names brought in talent, that’s a lot of experience, personality and veteran presence. This season suggests it has not been adequately replaced. Case in point: how does a team beat Carolina and Tampa Bay back to back - two elite teams - then lose 5-0 to Edmonton in its next start? incoming general manager Steen has his work cut out.
The past year was trying for St. Louis sports fans. Sorry folks, but the year ahead, barring dramatic changes, looks like more of the same.