COLUMN: After making the roster a mess, Doug Armstrong made Craig Berube the scapegoat; his next coaching hire/roster moves better be the right ones because if they aren't, the next fall guy could be -- and should be -- him

I wanted to refrain from making any opinions until I had heard St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong talk on Wednesday, one day after firing the only coach to bring a Stanley Cup to the Gateway City.

Craig Berube, who rescued the Blues from disappointment in 2018, rode with that team to the basement first before finally thrusting it to the mountain top on June 12, 2019 by raising hockey's holy grail with him; he took the fall for an underachieving squad that had lost its fourth straight game on Tuesday, 6-4 against the Detroit Red Wings.

I had to look back at some of Armstrong's most recent firings. I go back to Ken Hitchcock, who was fired following a 5-3 loss against the Winnipeg Jets on Feb. 1, 2017 and remembered that it appeared that Hitchcock, after an incredible run as coach since he took over in 2011, had lost the pulse of that veteran locker room. I understood it.

When Mike Yeo was fired after a 2-0 loss against the Los Angeles Kings on Nov. 19, 2018 and dropped the Blues to a disappointing 7-9-3 mark after Armstrong got the blessing from ownership to go out and spend money to fortify a roster that looked built but had greatly underachieved to that point, the changing of the guard was justified. It was a roster that was built to win but sputtered early.

I don't share those sentiments this time. To me, Craig Berube was the least of the Blues' issues currently.

For that, I go straight to the top to the one who makes the final calls on orchestrating a roster: Armstrong himself, and that roster construction, or unnecessary destruction, started not long after winning the Cup.

When Berube took over, that roster had skill, don't get me wrong, but it had that nasty snarl to it, a tough, rugged, and what captain Brayden Schenn said it was, "a hard, physical, workmanlike, demanding hockey team." The Blues had it, and that's why Berube was able to galvanize it to win it all four years ago.

But I'm going to take a stab at when I believe this all began to unravel, and for reasons that could have been avoided, in my opinion. I may not hit all the sticking/main points, but I'll touch on as many as I can think of.

It started the following season in 2019-20, when then-captain Alex Pietrangelo was entering the final year of his seven-year, $45.5 million ($6.5 million AAV) contract that carried a full no-trade clause the final three seasons. A lot of anticipation came as the season approached whether the Blues would lock up their captain, for likely, the remainder of his career; he was 29 at the time. Some thought locking up Pietrangelo for eight years would not look good at contract's end. It may, or it may not have, but considering he was coming off a Cup-winning team and in the prime years of his career with no signs of aging or slowing down, the investment would have been, in my opinion, well worth it in hopes of keeping the core group together. No. 1 defensemen don't grow on trees.

Well, an offer never came, at least initially, and what was a surprising move at the time was Armstrong squeezed situation when he went out and acquired Justin Faulk from the Carolina Hurricanes on Sept. 24, 2019 and signed him to a seven-year, $45.5 million extension with a full no-trade the first five years, a 15-team no-trade list the final two seasons . Faulk, a right-handed defenseman like Pietrangelo, also had one year left on his contract.

That had to be an awkward moment and sign to Pietrangelo that Armstrong already had a "replacement" in place in case he left via free agency.

Fair enough, but Pietrangelo, I was told, had not received any kind of offer as of that trade.

Joel Edmundson, a key piece to the Cup-winning team, was the first domino to fall, going to the Hurricanes in the deal.

The season went on, the Blues were good, playing well and were atop the Western Conference until COVID-19 derailed everything and they bottomed out in the Edmonton bubble. But still no deal with the captain was forthcoming.

When the offseason hit and things got extremely serious, there was the possibility that Pietrangelo would leave. I didn't think it would get that far, but it did. Pietrangelo loved St. Louis; still does. He wanted to play out his career here but wanted the security of it and not to be cast off somewhere else potentially he didn't want to be in the ladder stages of his career, so he asked for a full no-move clause.

Well, Armstrong has never issued any of his players one, free agency opened, talks were stalled, Armstrong pivoted, and the next domino to fall came when he made a signing that moved on from his captain, signing Torey Krug to a seven-year, $45.5 million ($6.5 million AAV) contract with a full NTC the first five years, 15-team no-trade the last two on Oct. 9, 2020; the Vegas Golden Knights came calling and swooped up Pietrangelo, who was gone three days later: seven years, $8.8 million AAV and a full no-move. Hard to pass it up, so he didn't. I'm told $7.5 million AAV and a full MNC would have sealed Pietrangelo here.

Armstrong said at the time giving a player a NMC is like giving the player more power than the owner. For those that need a refresher course, the difference between no-move and no-trade:

* NMC means the player cannot be waived, assigned to minors, or traded without approval. This also means they cannot be exposed in an Expansion Draft and must be protected.

* NTC means the player cannot be traded without their approval.

My point being, I understand not wanting to give out a collection of no-move clauses. Armstrong's stuck by it. But this was your captain, the pulse, heart and soul of your team, the first captain to raise the Cup. Reward him; don't look at it like you're giving him more power than the owner. My guess is Tom Stillman wouldn't have objected, and if he did, well look how that's turning out now. Pietrangelo is still playing at a high level four years later, raised another Cup last year, and doesn't look like he's slowing down any time soon.

So now Armstrong is without a No. 1 defenseman, and in time, made the investment to Colton Parayko, signing him to an eight-year, $52-million ($6.5 million AAV), six years of a full NTC, the final two a 15-team NTC list. Sound familiar? Parameters like Faulk and Krug. Parayko was being anointed to Pietrangelo's spot. 

So instead of having a true No. 1, the Blues had themselves two No. 2's on the right side.

We get that left-handed veterans Jay Bouwmeester and Carl Gunnarsson had to retire. Injuries got them too soon, key cogs off the Cup-winning roster. Nothing Armstrong could do there. He splurged some more and went out and acquired Marco Scandella from the Montreal Canadiens in 2020 for two second-round picks, then signed the lefty-handed D-man to a four-year, $13.1 million ($3.275 million AAV) contract with a seven-team no-trade list for its entirety.

So instead of giving Pietrangelo a no-move clause, that's now four NTC's given to four defenseman. Again, not a ton of difference in the two provisions for me.

Let's not forget promising d-man Vince Dunn, who was exposed for the expansion draft, and the Seattle Kraken plucked him off the Blues' roster. That's a tough one, because those can be tricky as to who to protect and who not to protect. But look how well Dunn has turned out in Seattle.

Let's hit some of the forwards, and how about Pat Maroon, who was on Cloud-Nine when he got to come back home and win a title, locker room glue guy, influential voice, probably could have had him back for under $1 million but he was allowed to walk -- and promptly went to Tampa Bay and won two more Cups in a row.

Young Robby Fabbri was traded away early in 2019-20 to the Detroit Red Wings, after his knee issues, probably wanted and needed a fresh start, is now flourishing.

Alexander Steen, another glue guy, veteran piece, had to call it a career after 2019-20.

Jaden Schwartz, motor guy, skill, played out his contract through 2020-21 but left via free agency to Seattle so he could be closer to his parents in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. Understandable. But what a piece he was for this franchise.

Brandon Saad was signed to a five-year, $22.5 million ($4.5 million AAV) contract July 29, 2021, a signing at the time I thought was solid. But again, it came with a full no-trade clause the first four years, 12-team no-trade list the final year.

There's Tyler Bozak, who wasn't brought back after that great 2021-22 season, and then we come to David Perron, much like Pietrangelo, who loved -- and still loves -- St. Louis.

Coming off a four-year, $16 million ($4 million AAV) contract after 2021-22, he obviously wanted to stay in St. Louis but received an offer of one year, $4 million during training camp of his final season in St. Louis and nothing else.

Armstrong wanted to fortify the defense, and acquired Nick Leddy from the Detroit Red Wings for Oskar Sundqvist and Jake Walman and chose to re-sign Leddy to a four-year, $16 million ($4 million AAV) with a full no-trade the first three years, 16-team no-trade list the final year. Money that -- at least a portion of it -- could have gone to Perron, who instead got two years at $9.75 million from Detroit ($4.75 million AAV) and he was gone. Another heart and soul guy gone, and in his two years with the Red Wings, is still providing well offensively and is a leader in that room, much like he was in the room with the Blues.

And finally, we come to last season, the final years of contracts for captain Ryan O'Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ivan Barbashev, three more key cogs from the Cup team. The Blues were going to try and make one more run, but when things went off the rails, they traded all three for picks and prospects.

Tarasenko was, at the time, going to get another payday in free agency, and the Blues, based off the salary cap, couldn't keep him, and Barbashev, a rising, budding player, was going to get a hefty pay raise from someone, and the Blues weren't going to be able to afford him either.

All this trickles down from the money and security of no-trade clauses given by Armstrong.

I thought there was a shot at bringing O'Reilly back, but it's understood when he got four years from the Nashville Predators, that's one more year than Armstrong was willing to offer and instead, he traded for Kevin Hayes, who is one year younger at 31 and makes roughly $1 million less. Look at how well O'Reilly is playing for the Predators.

All these guys were Berube players. They bought into his philosophy. They bought into the system. They were successful in it. Losing some of them was inevitable, but not this many.

Currently on the roster, 10 Blues either have full NTC's or modified NTC's. But Pietrangelo couldn't get one NMC, and what I'd say to that is the captain is the only player that gets one of those. Period. If that's Armstrong's stance on those.

So for the past year-plus, Berube was saddled with guys that didn't play, like Schenn said, "hard, physical, workmanlike, demanding," but with more finesse and skill. It was an adjustment, but he tried. There are guys currently on the roster who were comfortable playing his style, but not nearly as many.

Four years ago, the Blues were bruising and punishing; they would bully you out of the competition. Not nearly that now, and in the end, Berube took the fall.

Armstrong said Wednesday he feels personally responsible because, "we're not a successful franchise. These are things that you contemplate as you're with an organization. You come to an organization because you want to make it better and you want to leave it in a better spot. When I got here in '08, we were better for a long time. If I get fired in the next hour or if I get hit by a bus in the next hour, I don't feel today that I've it any better than where I found it, and that's an awful feeling."

It should be, because right now, it's much worse off than it was a couple years ago. Nobody can take away that he is the first and so far, only GM to be a Cup champion, but tearing it down this quickly and making the ensuing decisions hasn't worked in the least.

By letting some of those players go because he didn't want to sign the Perrons and O'Reillys into their mid-30's, not everyone is David Backes. And Armstrong, to his credit, didn't give in on giving Backes a fifth year when he was a free agent, and that decision panned out. Not everyone plays the style of Backes, who broke down in the ladder stages of his five-year, $30 million contract he signed with Boston in 2016.

And now with this assembled roster, it's evident that the grit of the recent past is long gone. So is the consistent winning.

"Yeah, yeah, it has," Armstrong said. "There's been attrition just because that's the way the salary cap works. Some players, we tried very hard to keep and it didn't work out and some players we didn't try that hard to keep and it didn't work out. But that's around the league, that happens everywhere. I get, 'Let's keep the band together until 2040.' It doesn't work that way and so we've moved on, but there's responsibility of the guys that are here to continue that and that's where I go back to ... I don't believe as I sit here today, right now, this group isn't any better than when I found it. And if I feel that way, I assume that the players that are in the room that weren't here for the glory have to feel even worse."

Nobody said keep the band together until 2040, but the cap wouldn't have been an issue had he not shelled out some of the contracts he did that he felt handicapped him in the end.

Going back to 2018-19, the cap ceiling was $79.5 million; it's four million more today, and next year, it is projected to go up to $87.5 million and by 2025-26, $92 million. Contracts to Perron, O'Reilly, even Pietrangelo to an extent, wouldn't have affected how business could be run moving forward.

Armstrong made big gambles by investing in Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou to matching eight-year, $8.125 million AAV contracts; he hit home runs by doing the same for Pietrangelo and Tarasenko in similar situations. Kyrou is getting a lot of heat from fans for his, at times, lackadaisical, nonchallant play.

Today, Armstrong gushed about Krug; he tried to trade him over the summer but was denied by Krug's NTC that cost them Travis Sanheim, who by the way is tearing it up in Philadelphia.

So instead of having flexibility to work, Armstrong had to be resorted to plucking the likes of Jakub Vrana and Kasperi Kapanen off the scrap heap while working younger players mixed in with trying to stay competitive in what's been termed a retool rather than a rebuild.

Don't get me wrong, Armstrong has made solid moves in the past, but his recent track record hasn't been good enough, and that's why he's in this bind.

Stillman has had Armstrong's back from the inception of this ownership's group, but Armstrong has been Public Enemy No. 1 around town for the most part for the decision to make Berube the scapegoat.

He's brought in Drew Bannister from Springfield to be the interim coach, and you only hope the man does well with this underperforming group under adverse situations. Maybe somebody can get some of these guys to start performing better, but my belief is Armstrong's going to go for a home run hire here. I think he has to.

Ownership has allowed him to spend to the cap ceiling since they bought the team in 2012, and with the fans up in arms more and more, if we start seeing empty seats in the building for a team that's drawn exceptionally well for years, that will get ownership's attention, and questions will be raised. I've never met an owner that's OK with taking a financial hit of any kind, and that falls on the GM when he puts together a roster the fans are not impressed to spend their money on.

"St. Louis, they're smart. The fans are smart," Armstrong said. "They know when they leave the building whether they got their money's worth. it's not hard, and we've got to give them their money's worth on a more consistent effort. If you're going to take 2.5 hours out of your night to turn on a hockey game, you should feel that it's worth your while. I don't think we do that enough right now and we don't do it long enough in games. That's not a winning brand of hockey and that's not a winning culture for an organization."