The suffering St. Louis fans finally got their hockey title.

It’s amazing that the team that beat up the Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals is the same team that was in last place this past January. But it was a comeback story from one-of-the-worse-to-first that will live in the city’s shredded sports history.

Very early on, I learned that the late and former Carolina basketball coach Bill Guthridge was a die-hard devotee of the Cardinals. He grew up on the Kansas plains and fell asleep listening to the Cards on his transistor radio on summer nights. Redbird fans remain among the most rabid and loyal in baseball and have been rewarded with 11 World Series titles, second only to the Yankees.

But for such a sports-crazed town, how come no pro football team or basketball team? St. Louis is the only city to lose two NFL franchises, the Cardinals to Arizona in 1987 and the Rams back to LA two years ago. The NBA Hawks, with Bob Pettit, were regular challengers to the great old Celtics teams, then moved in 1968 to Atlanta, which was building a new arena they wanted in St. Louis.

The Blues are not one of the original six in the modern National Hockey League. They were an expansion team in 1969, developing a fanatical fan base that hadn’t had an NHL team in more than 30 years. But unlike their predecessor and perennial champs, the Ottawa Senators that won 11 Stanley Cups, the Blues have been mostly singing since. They went to the Stanley Cup Finals their first three seasons, not one time in the nearly next 40 years.

Frenzied fans filled Enterprise Center, home of the Blues, and half of baseball’s Busch Stadium in the rain, to watch Game 7. After losing their chance to clinch the Cup at home Sunday night, they turned out in droves as the Blues stunned the Bruins with two early goals to raise their first Cup. If one trade could change all that futility, it was getting do-it-all center Ryan O’Reilly, the Cup MVP, from the Buffalo Sabres last summer.

St. Louis may get football and basketball teams back some day. The Greatest Show on Turf won Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000, but more money beckoned them back to the West Coast. Missouri is a great basketball state, so it doesn’t make much sense for hoops, either, to not have pro team since the 1970s in the old ABA, called the Spirit of St. Louis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related Stories
‹
Chansky's Notebook: Bailing Out
Roy Williams probably had reasons for the soft statements. Carolina fans reacted strongly to the video of a team party after the win over Duke. Only Armando Bacot and Day’Ron Sharpe were in the video, but a statement from players and managers said it was supposed to be a closed event that other students and […]
Chansky's Notebook: Please, Go In!
UNC men's basketball faces what is an early season must-win at Georgia Tech. Art Chansky says a look at the statistics is painful, but not terminal.
Chansky's Notebook: Leaky Steps Up
Dean Smith used to say he’ll be happy with a one-point win. The legendary UNC basketball coach struggled spiritually between playing well according to his teachings, regardless of outcome, and winning no matter how poorly you play. Since his job was to win and he was so competitive, he chose the latter. If he was […]
Chansky's Notebook: Rock(et) Star
Ben Kiernan was UNC’s MVP of the Notre Dame game. When Mack Brown went over the 31-17 loss, he gave mixed reviews to the two main branches of his Tar Heels’ play. He said the offense was good in the first half and then “went dead” in a scoreless second half. He praised the Tar […]
Chansky's Notebook: Goals and Ambitions
Garrison Brooks has both opportunity and pressure. On paper, the ACC looks as weak as it has been in some time due to widespread losses to graduation and early departures to the NBA, and no sure-shot superstars in the incoming recruiting classes. A beneficiary of this development is Brooks, the Carolina senior who was second-team All-ACC last year and earned the league’s […]
Chansky's Notebook: A COVID Debate
Clemson was livid that Florida State wouldn’t play the game. Let’s be lawyers, and make a case for each of the teams that did not play its scheduled game over the weekend. Clemson had traveled to Florida State when it learned a player with mild symptoms who had practiced with the team all week tested […]
Chansky's Notebook: Draft Dodgers
Carolina and Duke players have lost ground in the NBA draft. Like everything else with sports in the COVID era, the NBA draft goes off tonight after being postponed for five months. And if you look at the various mock draft boards, certain things jump off your screen. First of all, about half the names […]
Chansky's Notebook: A Two-Thirds Bet?
What if Phil Mickelson and Mack Brown amended their bet? With the Masters being moved back to this weekend due to COVID, perhaps the three-time champion should revisit the fun bet he made with Carolina’s football coach back in 2003. The famed lefthander was still seeking his first Green Jacket when he partnered with the Texas football coach at the […]
Chansky's Notebook: Kudos To Carolina
UNC teams did a commendable job beating the odds. Who among us thought the ACC would be playing football and other fall sports last summer? With the pandemic upon us and the medical experts still learning, the seasons looked like a long shot. While other conferences pumped the breaks and/or called off football, the ACC […]
Chansky's Notebook: Extra Motivation
Carolina’s schedule could be working to its advantage. When the COVID-revised list of games came out, it looked troublesome for the Tar Heels with Virginia Tech and Florida State basically bookending Notre Dame and Miami with four rivalry games in a row right in the middle. Coaches usually don’t like that because it takes a […]
›