from Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

Despite the reasonable cynicism, Hitchcock claims that after the Blues’ third straight playoff exit under his direction, the feeling is different this time.

“Yeah, it’s what happens when a team starts to really grow up,” he said. “It’s like we’ve learned a lot the last three years and you can see it in the players’ approach right now. They understand the details that they can control in the offseason. There’s no crash course going on now. Everybody is getting what they need.

“Some guys come in early, do their off-ice workout, take 20 minutes of the skate and leave. They’re not trying to search and find it. So they’ve got a maturity about them from a conditioning standpoint that good teams have. They know how long the season is, how hard the season is and they know what they have to do to get ready to have a good training camp.”

Having a good training camp, or even a record-breaking regular season, though, is no longer the measure of success in St. Louis.

more