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Dear Blues, are you going to break my heart again?

Everyone is up in arms over the you this season, the goaltending, the coaching, the forwards…scoring chances...I just have one question for you on the post Valentine's morn. Are you going to break my heart again Blues? It's an honest question, and I deserve the truth. We all deserve the truth.
St. Louis Blues mascot Louie. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Dear Blues,

Look at it like this Blues, to everyone else, you are basically the Denver Nuggets of the NHL. Everyone outside of this fair city looks at the you just like they do the Nuggets. Ohh…they made the playoffs again? Well isn’t that nice?

But all of us here wearing the Note across our chests say, "NO! This team will raise the Cup! This team, this team!" We say it year after year after year. We always have your back, no matter what, no matter what Mike Keenan may traipse through ol' Saint Louis

Everyone is up in arms over the you this season, the goaltending, the coaching, the forwards…scoring chances. But I just have one question for you on this post Valentine's morn. Are you going to break my heart again Blues? It's an honest question, and I deserve the truth. We all deserve the truth.

Blues, tell me this isn't true, but is this year's squad the same as every other team that has donned the Note since I was brought into this world in the basement of St. Louis City Hospital in November of 1981? Is this just another team that gets me all excited about the playoffs only to leave me on the doorstep, waiting for that long promised trip to Lord Stanley's house?

I'm struggling Blues with ever present thoughts and questions like, "Why on God’s green Earth do I think this team will be any different?" Then I my heart leaps and I remember "Ohhh…they have Jaden Schwartz!! and Vladimir Tarasenko!!! This is all so very exciting. How incredibly loaded this team is!!! That would be like if they had Brett Hull and Wayne Gretzky....there is no way they can lose...ohhh god..."

I wonder aloud sometimes, alone in front of Fox Sports Midwest with an ice cold frosty one in my left hand and a Vincent Van Doughnut in my right, "are the Blues a “Great Franchise?”" The first voice in my head shouts in a tone that sounds like a 10 year old Nolan Bartels and exclaims "YES!!! They always get you in the tournament, WILL!!" Then, the 36 year old voice attached to a sports heart that has been broken over and over again since the Regan administration replies, "No. Great franchises win championships."

I then get angry with myself for even believing. I scold myself "What part of your fevered imagination actually thought for even a millisecond that this team was going to win a cup? That fantasy should have left your brain faster than a Steve Yzerman slap shot over John Casey’s shoulder." But, I am a fan, a fanatic. I want to believe, and I need to believe. But, the heartbreaks, over and over. I mean just look at this top 3.

As the great American Songwriter,Matthew Ryan, would say, "The first heartbreak is the worst heartbreak."

  1. 1995-1996: This team had 5 Hall Of Famers. 5! Gretzky, Hull, MacInnis, Fuhr, and Pronger. 5!!!! How in the name of Garth Butcher did they not win the Cup!!!???
  2. 1999-2000: This team had a 500-goal scorer in Pierre Turgeon to go along with Pronger, MacInnis, and a guy with a GAA of 1.95 in Roman Turek. Ohh, and they had a head coach that will walk into the Hall of Fame in Joel Quenneville. They won the President’s Trophy, finished with 114 points! I was primed and ready for that parade down Clark Street baby! But, you did it t me again Blues, you bowed out in the first round. The first round. I want to hold out hope, but should I also hold out hope for those six-pack abs I've been chasing since 1998?
  3. 2015-2016: You gave me 20 years to get over that Hull-Gretzky team didn’t you? It was a new day! You won back to back riveting 7 game series and were on the precipice of the Cup finals! David Backes was unstoppable! I was waiting for it, I abandoned my fear of you ripping the heart from my chest like that scene in Temple of Doom. Then you lost to a team in a town that's never seen ice outside of a freezer in the San Jose Sharks. The last heartbreak.

So here I am again, starting to give you my sports heart on a puck shaped platter. Promise me, promise me, you will let me down easy this year. IF you're going to lose and destroy my spring and summer, do it like a gentleman and bow out in the first round. Don't drag me along and tell me you "need some space to clear your head," or that "Things are getting really busy at work." Then, the next thing I know it's the third round and you drop me like scolding hot toasted rav you grabbed too quick from the oven.

So please Blues, for me and for all of us that have given you our hearts year after year, spring after spring, don't leave us waiting at the alter looking at each other and whispering to the wedding party, "I'm sure they're still coming...they're probably just having problems with the dress." Walk up there like a man and say "I do." If you can promise us that, we can promise you a parade bigger than all 11 of the Cardinals combined.

Yours truly,

William E. Saulsbery and millions of Blues fans everywhere

@will_KSDK

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