This used to be such a cool day for Blues fans.

Back in 1990, the St. Louis Blues essentially started free agency in the National Hockey League when they signed defenseman Scott Stevens

 

away from the Washington Capitals with a 5 year, $5.4 million dollar contract.

More were to come over the next decade. Brendan Shanahan, and Jon Casey were signed. Stevens was signed to another offer sheet. The Blues got Al MacInnis and Dave Christian in trades because teams didn’t want to pay them. Marty McSorley was signed to an offer sheet. Also arriving as free agents were Grant Fuhr, Geoff Courtnall, Dale Hawerchuk and Joe Murphy.

The first day of free agency was awesome. And the Blues were always the stars.

Those days apparently have passed the Blues by. Despite making a couple of important trades, most notably for goalie Jaroslav Halak, we expect the Blues to stay out of big money free agency.

That’s too bad. If the Blues weren’t going to win it all on the ice in June, at least we were excited when they won the battle off the ice in July. No NHL team will ever have the chance to do that again, not with the salary cap. But the first few days of July were the most exciting for Blues fans in the 90’s, and I miss it.