Shelves in locker room tell story of Blues' historic season

ST. LOUIS - Near the front of the Blues locker room, directly to the left when you first walk in, is a blue board with six shelves each containing 10 pucks from every Blues' win in the 2018-19 season.

The first one, which came Oct. 11 in a victory over the Calgary Flames at Enterprise Center, was placed on the shelf by Blues legend Bob Plager after the game.

"Congratulations," Plager told the team that night. "You've got to win the first before you win the rest of them, fellas. That's a big game."

For the next two months, though, the shelves remained pretty bare.

But think back to December just before the holiday break, you might remember that's when Blues (Interim) Head Coach Craig Berube pointed to a 3-1 win in Calgary on Dec. 22 and said that's when he began to see signs the team was turning its season around. That puck sits on the second row, where the Blues had just 14 wins.

Two pucks from there, you will see a puck featuring a Philadelphia Flyers logo - that's the one from Jordan Binnington's first career start, a 3-0 shutout against the Flyers at Wells Fargo Center. You already know the rest of his story.

The board filled up really fast from there.

From Jan. 23 until Feb. 19, the Blues won 11 straight games, filling the entire third row and part of the fourth.

On the bottom two rows sit the pucks from 15 wins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs - four from the opening round against Winnipeg, four from the second-round matchup with Dallas, four from the Western Conference Final against San Jose, but only three from the Stanley Cup Final against Boston.

Because the shelves were completely full with still one historic win to go, the Blues' equipment staff built a small shelf and centered it at the very top of the board to accommodate the most important puck in franchise history.

Now, that puck - the one from Game 7 in Boston from the Blues' 4-1 victory that secured the first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history - sits right at the top. It was placed there by Plager before the epic Championship Parade and Rally.

"I want the fourth one," Plager told reporters after the Blues punched their ticket to the Stanley Cup Final in May. "I'll put the fourth one up there, too. I put the first one up, and I'll put the last one up."

Step back and look at the entire board and you'll realize those shelves now contain some of the most valuable and important pieces of memorabilia in franchise history: Pat Maroon's double overtime Game 7 winner against the Dallas Stars in the second round, and Carl Gunnarsson's overtime winner in Game 2 in Boston that gave the Blues' their first-ever win in the Stanley Cup Final.

A historic season, illustrated by 61 pucks mounted on a locker room wall.