St. Louis Blues Open Training Camp With Motivation, New Additions To Blend In Searching For More

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- To no one’s surprise, Jim Montgomery saw some good, and some not-so-good to open St. Louis Blues training camp for the 2025-26 season.

The Blues coach, opening his first full camp after he was hired Nov. 25, 2024, and his coaching staff put two groups on the ice for the first time Thursday, will do so again Friday before opening preseason play Saturday against the Dallas Stars.

“Pretty good overall,” Montgomery said. “Intensity was good. Pace was slow in a couple of drills, but really good in other drills when we had to really battle each other. I liked the way our second and third effort is naturally being there on the first day. Execution was not where we would like it, but you kind of expect that on Day 1.”

Montgomery and the Blues went on an unprecedented run last year that saw the team reach the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in three seasons, highlighted by a franchise-record 12-game winning streak to get in as the second wild card before falling to the Winnipeg Jets in seven games of the first round.

“It’s great that ‘Monty’ is going to have a full training camp to get us ready,” Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said as he enters his final season as GM. “I think one of the things you want to be careful against is when you finish as strong as you did, you think that that is going to be a natural carryover. One of the things you understand over time is like [Logan] Mailloux doesn’t care how we played, [Pius] Suter doesn’t care how we played, [Nick] Bjugstad doesn’t care how well we played at the end. We have to build our own team again. We have to start that foundation. There’s a lot of things that the players can remember and learn from from last year, but to think that they can replicate it by just showing up, hockey doesn’t work that way. The NHL doesn’t work that way. Just the understanding of when I look at the Central Division (and) how strong that is right now, we have to be ready to go at the start of the season. It’s going to be a battle every night. When you’re coming from behind, you can sneak up on teams. This year, hopefully we proved to some teams that we’re a capable opponent and we’ll get their best game and they’ll get ours and we’ll see how we fit.”

For Montgomery, he was able to adjust and implement on the fly in the middle of the season. How he gets to begin fresh, anew in putting in place what needs to transpire.

“Competing is going to be No. 1,” he said. “Playing with pace, being selfless, things that gave us a lot of success, but we need to ramp it up a couple levels. You’ve got to get off to a great start, so camp, if you don’t have a camp, you don’t get off to a good start. Today was a good Day 1. I expect them to be better tomorrow.”

Suter (two years, $8.25 million) and Bjugstad (two years, $3.75 million) were the top two free agent signings this past summer.

Pius Suter #stlblues ... pic.twitter.com/R95rZS8x9X
— Lou Korac (@lkorac10) September 18, 2025

“Just the overall depth it gives us, right,” Montgomery said. “Both of them real smart, veteran players. You can tell already they understood how we want to play. They were making good, defensive plays and real good offensive support plays.”

Mailloux, a defenseman acquired from the Montreal Canadiens for Zack Bolduc, will get his first big chance to earn his way onto an NHL roster.

“He was known as an offensive defenseman; that’s what he’s been his whole career, and I can see the shot, I can see the instincts,” Montgomery said. “But what was really impressive was the defensive stick. He got his stick on a lot of pucks, ended a lot of plays, killed plays. That was nice to see.

#stlblues will be working quite a bit with Logan Mailloux (No. 23) in the D-zone. They know what he can do with a puck on his stick ... pic.twitter.com/yQsBZ47e46
— Lou Korac (@lkorac10) September 18, 2025

“I think that’s what his role was last year was to work on that (defense) and you can tell. He’s a conscientious, good teammate because he got better. His stick, we watched clips of him and it was very evident in the American (Hockey) League that he was doing a real good job with his stick.”

And veteran Milan Lucic, invited in to camp on a PTO, comes with familiarity and a chance.

Milan Lucic wearing No. 12 in #stlblues camp ... pic.twitter.com/D70TvkGXgC
— Lou Korac (@lkorac10) September 18, 2025

“He's got to win a job,” Montgomery said. “I know that sounds simple, but he's got to be good 200 feet, he's got to know what we're doing defensively. There was one rush drill where he took it wide and like that was NHL speed. He took it hard to the net. Those are things that we think, as a team, we need to be better at than last year and maybe he's someone that can help us.”

Added Blues captain Brayden Schenn on Lucic: “He’s a guy that you want on your team. He can control the bench, control the room. He’s a guy when you have on your team, guys know he’s out there. That’s an important guy you need in your locker room and on your team. I’m looking forward – I think we all are – to have him. Everyone speaks very highly of him. He’s a heck of a teammate.”

As the Blues begin their journey to the Oct. 9 season-opener against the Minnesota Wild at home, does Game 7 against the Jets still sting and should it serve as a motivator?

“I think it’s motivation because we don’t like the way we finished that game,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t advance, we should have advanced, but we’re not laboring it, we’re going to learn from it and we’re going to get better. That’s our mindset and starting off camp right now, we’re not thinking Game 7, we’re thinking about getting off to a great start this year.”