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Craig Berube claims his best players are 'making a lot of money' and 'don't care about the team'

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Andrew Loftus
February 24, 2023  (9:01)
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It is quite obvious that things have not gone according to plan for the St Louis Blues this season. The team will not make it to the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season and has already started to trade away veteran players such as Ryan O'Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko. Head coach Craig Berube is still not pleased with the team's lackluster effort lately. The team has only three wins in their last ten games and Berube believes that the team's best players are not preforming at a high level of play. In fact, he called out the players that are making a lot of money and not playing well.

Our best players don't play with any passion, no emotion and no inspiration at all. They don't play inspired hockey. You can not play in this league without emotion, grit and being inspired.

They're getting paid lots of money and they're not doing the job. End of story. That's it. That's what it boils down to.

Berube even doubled down.

A lot of our best players not doing the job.

When asked why, Berube didn't mince words.

I don't know, you'll have to ask them. I guess they don't care about the team.

Despite St. Louis not playing well this season, this team is not in terrible shape. They've traded away some of their high-priced veterans and received some future draft picks that will help this team to retool. They may not be finished trading away veterans either as the trade deadline is right around the corner. They already have fine young players like Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou to build around. It is not like this team needs a full rebuild, they just need some fine tuning.

Good for Craig Berube for calling out his team for their poor effort lately. Clearly, he wants his to team to continue to play their best despite not making the playoffs and he's holding players accountable. It will be interesting to see if the players ignore Berube's message or if they respond to it promptly.

Berube wasn't the only one to call out the Blues players because teammate Alexey Toropchenko did little to shut down this criticism.

I'm trying to do my best, and I hope everyone is on the same page. But it's not like that, unfortunately.

Even if we're not in the playoff spot, I will do everything because it's a hockey game. You can't (disappear), especially when you're playing in the NHL. You're not playing somewhere else, on the beer league or something like that. You need to show something. You need to show heart and character and be strong everywhere. Just play from your heart. Not good.

It's clear by these comments things in St. Louis definitely aren't going well.

POLL

Can a coach win with this sort of comments?

No, players hate coaches like this1515.6 %
Yes, he's holding them accountable5456.3 %
It depends on the coach2728.1 %
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