Wild West: General Manager Ratings – St. Louis Blues

In part 10 of our look at the Western Conference GMs, we will look at Doug Armstrong in St. Louis. Before St. Louis he was the Assistant GM in Dallas from 1993 to 2002 and the GM from January 24th, 2002 through November 13th, 2007. He was hired in St. Louis as the Director of Player Personnel from May 2008 to June 30th, 2010, at which point he was promoted to General Manager and has remained for almost ten years. 

Category Ratings: 

5: below average

6: average

7: above average

8: top ten

9: Exceptional 

10: Perfect

Overall ratings should be based at seven being average, but the biggest takeaway should be how each GM compares to the others.

Prior Ratings:

Bob Murray – Anaheim: 7.85

John Chayka – Arizona: 6.62

Brad Treliving – Calgary: 7.5

Stan Bowman – Chicago: 7.6

Joe Sakic – Colorado: 7.55

Jim Nill – Dallas: 7.225

Ken Holland – Edmonton: 6.925 (post-2009)

Rob Blake – Los Angeles: 7.025

David Poile – Nashville: 7.55

St. Louis Blues

GM – Doug Armstrong, hired July 1st, 2010

The first category, winning:

Regular-season record: 445 W 251 L 43 OTL 36 SOL 0.626 Winning %

Best result and playoffs: The best regular-season under Armstrong was in 2013-14 when the team posted 52 wins and 11 points. They posted 109 points in 2011-12, 2014-15, and 107 in 2015-16.

The Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2018-19 after being tied for last overall in the league on January 1st, 2019. The team went down the stretch after the New Year, posting 30 wins and only 10 losses in regulation time and then hit the ground running in the playoffs and never looked back. They also accomplished this with a new coach after firing Mike Yeo on November 20th, 2018, and hiring Craig Berube. It's amazing to think how close this team was to blowing things up and trading some of their core. 

Armstrong inherited a Blues team that missed the playoffs in 2009-10 but had a good nucleus of young players and prospects in David Backes (25), Alexander Steen (25), Patrick Berglund (21), Alex Pietrangelo (19), T.J. Oshie (22),