Doug Armstrong has a small list of names. Drew Bannister is one of them.
On Thursday, as the Blues conducted their season-ending media availability, Armstrong provided clarity on the club’s head coaching position moving forward: St. Louis has narrowed its list of coaching candidates, and Bannister made the cut as a finalist.
The Blues will still interview other candidates for the position, and Armstrong said the team would hire someone well before the draft on June 28-29, even before the start of June. Armstrong cautioned that the decision would not be coming immediately as “some of the names that I want to talk to aren’t available. Their teams are playing. Some of the names I want to talk to I’m going to give a little bit of time to.”
Bannister took over as the interim coach in mid-December when the Blues fired Craig Berube. He went 30-19-5, a record that would be good for a 99-point pace across an entire 82-game season. Bannister, 50, just finished his sixth season within the Blues organization, and the previous 5½ came in the AHL.
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Other than Bannister’s inclusion on the list of candidates, Armstrong offered little detail about the specifics of the search.
How many finalists are there?
“When you look at some of the people in this situation, they’re just starting the process and might have 15 names and might want to talk to eight or nine,” Armstrong said. “I’ve whittled that down to a very, very small number.”
Is Joel Quenneville someone that the Blues would ask the league about his status? Quenneville is currently not allowed to coach in the NHL following his role in the sexual assault of Kyle Beach within the Blackhawks organization.
“I’m not going to get into individual names on what we’re going to do on anyone quite honestly,” Armstrong said.
Is previous head coaching experience in the NHL a prerequisite for the next hire?
“No,” Armstrong said succinctly.
In laying out the criteria for the next coach, Armstrong painted the picture of a coach who could help usher in the next era of Blues hockey, including guiding new, young talent and handling veterans, too.
“Wants to have the respect of the veteran players, but the ability for the younger players to express themselves and grab a bigger role,” Armstrong said. “That’s a difficult task. You can go to a certain coach and you know what their mindset is, it’s ‘I have the team that I think can win the Stanley Cup, and here’s the guy that can get us over the next 3% or 4%.’ I believe in our team, but we’re not at that level quite yet. That removes a coach that would fill that criteria.
“This coach, we want to come in that has an understanding of pushing and prodding and expectations of a fan base that should have expectations but also knowing that we are in the process of doing something sustainable and allowing learning and growth to happen.”
Whoever the next coach is will be trying to avoid a third straight season without a playoff appearance, which has only happened once in franchise history, from 2005 to 08. Ƶ will also be the fourth head coach that Armstrong has hired with St. Louis on a permanent basis, joining Ken Hitchcock, Mike Yeo and Berube.
As for Bannister, he understood that this scenario was a possibility.
“When I first came in, there was no promises made,” Bannister said. “There were no expectations other than getting this team to where we all believed it could be and starting that process with the players and working on the habits and details in our game that we all knew we had to get better at to start to have success.”
When Bannister was promoted, Armstrong said he had an extensive list of candidates. But as the Blues hovered around playoff contention (in part thanks to strong goaltending and a timely power play), more of those names were removed.
“As I watched him perform and I watched our team perform, I started to cross names off that list,” Armstrong said. “Now, Drew is one of a very small number of people I want to talk to about moving forward. I thought he did a very good job.
“I thought he was able to put a balance of pushing and prodding to get the best team on the ice every night, with also throwing a little bit of hope out there and a blind eye to putting young players in situations they haven’t been in, and living with the results. I think that’s how you grow.”
Bannister said in working with Armstrong closely across the past four months, the two were able to build a greater relationship.
“I think now, he knows me better as a person, as an individual and also as a coach,” Bannister said. “I think he knows the coach that he’s getting. I think for me personally, the process of what I’ve gone through as a coach, whether it was in junior hockey, the American Hockey League or the NHL, I continued to get better.
“I believe I still have a lot of growth in myself as a coach in the National Hockey League. I’m looking forward to whatever’s next. Certainly, for me, the No. 1 option would be to stay with the St. Louis Blues and be the head coach of this hockey club.”