For Blues fans and players who have been suffering for a long time, it's different this time around

"Previously, you had high hopes every year, and this year, in January, you had more hope," Siddle said.

However, the relationship between Blues fans and optimism is also complicated. Take Eland Siddle again. The Blues were in the basement. He was in Las Vegas. At odds of 100 to 1, and with no clear reason, he bets $ 25 on them to win the Stanley Cup. What looked like a gift to a bookmaker now looks like a wise investment – even though Siddle was about to count his winnings for the moment.

"Let's go tonight and I can believe it," he said before the sixth match. "After years and years of defeats and defeats, it's strange, it's surreal that it can really happen."

It's happening, St. Louis.

Play "Gloria".

Each championship team seems to have their original voodoo and backstory pieces. The Blues' adoption of the 1980s pop anthem, "Gloria," by Laura Branigan, as a song of victory, is especially important to them. The story goes that in a Philadelphia bar, a few players were watching an NFC playoff game that continued to play "Gloria" during the match's commercials. The ear worm became infected in their minds, and "Gloria" was touted as the team's triumph jam.

But this is only one of the delightfully strange and undeniably sincere stories around this Blues team that gives it an impression of difference from previous editions. Stories like:

Striker Oskar Sundqvist dined Monday with defenseman Colton Parayko, eating turkey burgers and evoking something that made them indigestible: the horrific first months of the season, which cost coach Mike Yeo his job and apparently led GM Doug Armstrong to consider a "everything must go" solution for a last place team. "We were talking about the madness, going from where we were to what we are now," Sundqvist said, "and how everyone in this room has gathered and started to to work for each other. "

This is the recurring theme in the Salle des Bleus: friendliness. The chemistry that developed among them on and off the ice this season was the cure for their failures early in the season.

"I've never been part of a team like this, it kind of reminds me of my rookie year, the team was really tight, just like that." But there's something this team's special, and I think it's continuing on the ice, "said defender Joel Edmundson, who entered the league in 2015." When you're tight against one another! " Outside the ice, when you have a good time outside the ice, you play one for the other on the ice.This is what you need to win in this league. "

But perhaps more than anything, this team is defined by a connection to the past when pursuing the Cup.

Like Brett Hull. Like Chris Pronger. Like Kelly Chase. Like Bob Plager. Like all the old Blues who are still part of the team and who were in the building during game 6 and were seen kissing and crying after the 2019 edition captured by l & # 39; West.

"I saw Chaser crying in the hallway after the game.You know, it almost makes us cry too.It's amazing to see these guys happy.This gives us goosebumps," said L & R. Striker Vladimir Tarasenko. "When you see these guys crying, it means a lot to us too, they're probably more enthusiastic than us, and it's also a great support."

Bob Plager wants his parade.

He said it last August, when the Blues unveiled their new third jersey. He handed one to O & # 39; Reilly, who had not yet played for St. Louis after being acquired from Buffalo. Plager remembered him whispering, "You know, I need my parade."

O & # 39; Reilly responded, "Well, we'll get you one."

Plager is not a known name in the NHL, but it is synonymous with the St. Louis Blues as The Note. Defensive defenseman, he is for life in St. Louis: an original Blues player in 1967, he played with them throughout 1977, before joining their office. He has appeared in three consecutive Blues teams that competed in the Stanley Cup Final from 1968 to 1970, when the NHL's expansion split the teams into an Original Six death group and a conference. expansion from which the Blues emerged three times. The Blues are the only team in NHL history to have competed in several Stanley Cup finals without winning a single game.

Outside the ice, Plager has been an ubiquitous presence in the community for decades. And this season, his gloves were present in the locker room of the Blues.

A pair of his 1960s hockey gloves was used as a "match player" trinket at Blues post-game celebrations this season. "It's just a tribute to the guys who built this thing to take us where we are," said Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo. "I think we all know what Bobby represents in this organization and this city, so it's fun for us to make him part of our group.Nobody likes this organization more than Bobby, especially with the efforts and the time that he gives.And he loves earns more than anyone else. "

He was there when the Blues won their first game of the season, placing themselves and placing a puck in a cabinet where each of his victories is victorious this season. "I told them that I wanted to put the [final] one on up there too. The first puck and the last puck, "said Plager after match 6, still teary eyes face the emotional victory.

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Bob Plager, a former St. Louis Blues graduate, explained what seeing this team play for the Stanley Cup was for him.

Pietrangelo said his teammates are not only playing for themselves, but for the Blues that preceded them. "These guys have laid the foundation for this organization and they are pretty good on the Blue Note, we are trying to keep going," he said.

The Blues are a family. This has been the franchise's point of sale for decades, as former players are still part of the franchise and the city. After the sixth match, Pietrangelo made several blunders to David Perron, who played several times with the Blues, but it's not for nothing that he keeps coming back. That's the same reason Bob Plager stayed. It's about the community.

"You look at the fans when we scored [empty net] goal, and it's like I said before: this city, and what's going on … you see the baseball players here at the game with their Blues jerseys. We went to the final three times. We did not see any Cardinal at our games, "said Plager.

But this season is different.

That's one thing he confessed before the sixth game. Sometimes, after a victory on the road, he climbed aboard the Blues team's charter and had the victory song that invaded him. "It's our hymn here," he says. "It's really cool to see how the team and the fans have come together."

He felt that this bond had been growing for a few months. The car flag population has increased. The same goes for the number of cars ringing "Gloria" at traffic stops. O & # 39; Reilly said that when he does his shopping at Whole Foods, fans join him to offer him encouragement punches. "It's so cool that people are part of it.It's all about it.It's not just guys here.It's a city that is together. We are all trying to win. "

The city has also made this trip. Edmundson recalled the awkwardness of conversations with friends in January. "The first half of the year, the conversations were of the type" We always believe in you. Hard year, but you'll have them next year, "he said." Now the conversations are like: Let's go get the cup. Play & # 39; Gloria. & # 39; This has definitely changed and for the better. "

So, it's never "Do not mess that up?"

Edmundson laughs. "No … no, I do not want to hear that," he said. "But there is a buzz in this city."

This buzz? It is saying that this time it is different.

"I'm a bit optimistic anyway, maybe I'm a bit too high on this one, but there's something magical here, there really is," said Lamore, Bernie's fan. Federko.

The more time we spend around this team and this community, it's the fact that several generations of Blues fans did not know if this opportunity would come up, a reality that might not be perceived by them. outside this community.

Think of the most infamous championship droughts in the NHL.

The New York Rangers, 54 years without a Cup. The Washington Capitals, who went from 1974 to last season without one, have broken the dreams of their fans in the league in increasingly horrible ways. The Sharks, who are fundamentally "Capitals West" when it comes to disappointed expectations. Teams such as the Philadelphia Flyers (1975) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (1967), whose critics evoke their post – season unsuitability with the frequency with which many of us discuss the weather.

But the St. Louis Blues? They are the wallpaper of the NHL, always there and rarely commented.