from Tom Timmermann of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

“We are going to have a different look,” Armstrong said. “We’re going to explore improving our team to levels we probably haven’t explored in the past. But it has to make sense.”

The word Hitchcock kept coming back to describe it Tuesday was “reckless,” and he must have believed it because he used it five times in the span of 85 words at one point. Recklessness, he admitted, has the potential to be a lot of fun and can also give a coach more gray hairs, which brought a smirk to the face of Armstrong, sitting next to Hitchcock, as he no doubt was trying to figure if Hitchcock had any hair that hadn’t already turned gray.

“We’ve got to go back to reckless,” Hitchcock said. “(Our style is) too conservative, it’s too careful, it’s too much skill ahead of work. We’ve got to get back to reckless. We’ve got more skill than we’ve ever had since I’ve been here. But skilled, careful hockey doesn’t win. You’ve got to play reckless. We need to get back to the reckless play we had before. That’s what Doug and I talked about. You can do it and still be responsible. But we’ve got to get back to reckless play. We’ve got to ask more people to be involved offensively and defensively.”

Armstrong pointed to two defensemen on the roster who didn’t see action in the playoffs as examples of what the team is looking for: Robert Bortuzzo and Petteri Lindbohm. He mentioned the names of forwards Ty Rattie and Robby Fabbri as youngsters who will get long looks early in the season.

more