from Jeremy P. Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
It was a familiar scene again Tuesday, two days after another Blues season had short-circuited, with general manager Doug Armstrong sitting behind a table and speaking about a stronger evaluation of the organization this offseason.
So what was different this time?Well, the most obvious was that the person sitting next to him, Ken Hitchcock, might not be on the Blues' bench after that evaluation. Core players including Barret Jackman, David Backes, Alexander Steen, T.J. Oshie and Patrik Berglund bear as much of the responsibility for the club’s continued playoff failures and are in more jeopardy of being moved than in the past. And Armstrong himself faced increased scrutiny, spending part of the session owning up to his share of the blame.
“We as a group, we don’t mind the praise, so we have to take the hits,” Armstrong said. “We’re open season for a couple of weeks. Take your shots, have at it, we get it, we signed up for it. But my job is not to do something that’s going to alleviate my responsibility and make a good headline.
“We deserve the criticism because we’re not performing at this time of year. (But) if you’re looking for a statement today that’s going to have a definite answer, I don’t have that yet. I need to use the time that’s allotted to me now to do that evaluation.”
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