Armstrong named GM of Hockey Canada

Blues GM to guide Canadian national team for first time less than two 

years after guiding Blues to Cup; is pleased with start for Blues in 2021 

By LOU KORAC
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- It's been quite the ride for Blues general manager Doug Armstrong the past couple of years, and not just here in St. Louis but north of the border as well.

Hockey Canada has announced the management group that will build Canada’s men’s Olympic team at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China, if NHL players are able to participate, and the Sarnia, Ontario native Armstrong was named the GM of Team Canada on Wednesday.

(St. Louis Blues photo)

Blues general manager Doug Armstrong was named as the GM of Hockey

Canada on Wednesday to guide the men's Winter Olympics team in 2022.

Armstrong, who helped guide the Blues to their first Stanley Cup in team history in 2019, will be joined by associate general manager Ken Holland, the GM of the Edmonton Oilers; assistant general managers Ron Francis, the new GM of the Seattle Kraken, former Florida Panthers and Vancouver Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo and Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney, and senior vice-president of national teams Scott Salmond.

The announcement was made by Hockey Canada's chief executive officer Tom Renney and Scott Smith, the organization’s president and chief operating officer.

"It is an exciting time to be able to introduce the members of Canada’s management group, who each bring a tremendous amount of international and championship experience that will benefit our team if NHL players are able to participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics," Renney said in a statement. "Under Doug’s leadership, as well as that of our entire management group, we’re thrilled to task them to lead us into 2022, with the opportunity to oversee our staff and players as they compete for an Olympic gold medal."

Armstrong served as a member of the management team in 2010 and 2014 when Canada won a pair of gold medals. This will be his first time as the GM of Hockey Canada.

"It's certainly a great honor," Armstrong said. "Any time you're asked to participate for Hockey Canada, it's a great honor and certainly in the Olympics working with the guys I'm going to get to work with is going to be a special thrill. We're hoping that the NHL and the NHLPA can continue to find a way to get us there. We'll work like we're going and excited about the opportunity."

Armstrong previously served as the GM of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey championship, was a special assistant of the gold medal-winning team at the IIHF World Championship in 2007 and in 2016 was a senior advisor, and was the assistant GM in 2008 that won silver and was the GM in 2009. He was also part of the worlds staff in 2002 and 2013. 

Armstrong is in his 11th season as GM of the Blues where he won the NHL GM of the Year Award in 2011-12. He previously spent 16 years with the Dallas Stars, winning the Stanley Cup as assistant general manager in 1999.

After helping the Blues and the city of St. Louis overcome the hex of winning a Cup for this city, now comes the pressure of trying to help guide a country to a gold medal, where anything else is considered a failure.

"I sort of use the analogy of it's like playing Russian Roulette being the manager of Team Canada," Armstrong said. "It's exhilarating, it's nervousness and it's a lot of fun and you only get to lose once. You know the rules going in, there's great expectations in Canada to put a team on the ice that's productive and fights and wins gold medals, and that's our goal going in. You understand the pressures that go with it, you understand that there's 38 million people that are going to have questions about the team that we pick and you just move on and do the best you can and hope it works out."

Considering the kind of talent that will be at Canada's disposal, it better work out.

"I'm certainly going to rely on Ken Holland, Don Sweeney, Roberto Luongo, Ron Francis as we go forward, but it's an interesting format because we probably do have two teams that could potentially medal if we went that direction in Canada," Armstrong said. "It's a difficult process, but what you're trying to do in my experiences working in the past with Steve Yzerman as he put these teams together is you're looking to get the top skill players, the best skating players, but at the end of the day, you're not picking an all-star team. You're picking a team that has all the elements combined in it from power play to penalty killing to 5-on-5 play so you want to pick the best players that can gel together. It's a difficult task, but it's a task that I assume every other manager of every other country would love to have the resources that we have to choose from."

Blues coach Craig Berube will certainly get a look to be the head coach, if not on the coaching staff considering he's a Stanley Cup-winning coach. That pedigree doesn't come lightly.

"We certainly have a long list that gets whittled down as we go," Armstrong said. "Like the players, you have so many players to choose from. There's a lot of great Canadian coaches to choose from. We're going to take our time and try to build a staff, not just a head coach. Head coaches all have different personalities. Some are just head coaches and some can be a head coach but also support a staff in an assistant role and what we want to do is make sure when we name our entire staff that there's unity and inclusion and the ability to function as one.

"... Certainly you look at the gentlemen that have won Stanley Cups or Presidents' Trophies have to go into the equation. I don't want to name a specific name because that will just lead to speculation, but certainly all the guys that have won Stanley Cups or Presidents' Trophies or have been highly competitive coaches over the last number of years are going to be considered."

On the home front, Armstrong is a happy camper with the Blues off to a fast 7-2-1 start and tied for first in the Honda West Division and on a four-game winning streak.

"We're finding ways to manufacture points, which is always a positive as we're getting to know each other," Armstrong said. "Your depth is a great asset, but it also creates issues as far as ice time and finding their roles. I think Craig and his staff have done a great job sharing that workload. Certainly I think at 7-2-1, we're very happy, we're in the upper echelon of the NHL as far as winning percentage and as we're learning each other, as we're getting into a new season, the points that we bank now can never be taken from us. I'm excited where we're at right now, but I know the heavy lifting is coming up in front of us."

Among the players Armstrong spoke of is forward Jordan Kyrou, who has 12 points (five goals, seven assists) in 10 games, and Justin Faulk, who is off to a roaring start after a less-than-productive first season in St. Louis after being acquired from the Carolina Hurricanes. But the Blues are getting great production in goal from Jordan Binnington (6-1-1, 2.55 goals-against average, .918 save percentage), Brayden Schenn (six goals, four assists in 10 games), David Perron (five goals, four assists in 10 games), Ryan O'Reilly (two goals, six assists, 59.36 face-off percentage in 10 games) and Jaden Schwartz (two goals, six assists in 10 games) to name a few.

"Jordan Kyrou came as advertised in a sense that I think he was the Canadian Hockey Player of the Year, certainly the Ontario Hockey Player of the Year," Armstrong said. "He was a very good player on our World Junior team and that usually is a barometer of how you're going to get to the NHL. This hasn't been the easiest organization to break into when you're competing with the top teams, you usually have a more veteran influence and Jordan had some setbacks injury-wise that seemed to get in his way when he was looking to push forward. He's always had the tools, his skating's dynamic, his hockey sense offensively is dynamic. I think he's done a great job understanding a way the game coaches trust is to be a good 200-foot player, play in his own zone and I think he's embraced that understanding that will only increase his ice time, so we're very happy with where he's at today. Now the hard part for young players is understanding all the work he needed to put in last summer, all the work he needs to put in practice is just the starting point if he wants to be a dominant player and have a 1,000-game career, which I know he does.

"With Justin Faulk, I'm not surprised by the way he's playing right now. That was the player that played a number of years in Carolina. We talked about this last year and it was a difficult situation in the sense that when you bring a player in, you'd like to have a defined role and we had a defined role in our top four, but it wasn't in the right side, it wasn't doing the specific thing. We were trying to create a puzzle instead of using the pieces that were there, and I think this year obviously with Alex leaving, it's created an opening and he's taken full advantage of it. I'm very happy for him, but I'm not surprised that this is the player that we're getting."

With news that Vladimir Tarasenko has started to skate on his own, the clock is ticking when the Blues' top goal scorer might begin the process of returning to the lineup.

(St. Louis Blues photo)

The Blues are encouraged by the progress of Vladimir Tarasenko (right)

but the winger won't be back for several more weeks.

Tarasenko, who had surgery on his left shoulder for the second time in a year in September and third time overall, was injured Oct. 24, 2019 against the Los Angeles Kings and missed all but 10 games of the regular-season before returning for four games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and had to shut it down again.

"He's on the ice, he's skating now," Armstrong said of Tarasenko. "The mile post that you go through on this stuff is you get the surgery obviously, you start the rehab, you need to get back to the doctors that performed the surgery to check off on the fence posting in your rehabilitation. All those have been checked off. He's on the ice, he's conditioning. His shoulder's certainly not 100 percent right now, but it's at a point where the safety and the mechanisms are in place that we feel he can skate. He can receive passes, make passes, shoot to a level of his comfort. He's still a ways away. We won't see him for a number of weeks, but he's certainly on the right track."