Editor’s note: This is the ninth of 10 installments analyzing questions facing the Blues entering the 2024-25 season.
2. Is Robert Thomas on his way to becoming a 100-point player?
If the Blues’ retool on the fly is going to work, Robert Thomas has to be a big reason why.
After last season’s breakout year in which he had 86 points, Thomas provided some comfort for St. Louis. Now, the question is: How far can Thomas push it?
In his first season as a true No. 1, Thomas delivered magnificently.
He played in all situations, truly. He was the best contributor on the power play. He almost always took the opening faceoff of a penalty kill. He was on the ice to close out a tight game. He was on the ice to try to tie a game. He played more in overtime than any other Blues player. He took a shot in five of the team’s seven shootouts. And, oh yeah, he was one of the most impactful five-on-five forwards in the league.
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If there was any question about Thomas absorbing the responsibility Ryan O’Reilly left behind, Thomas answered them across the entire season, becoming an All-Star for the first time in his career. In breaking out last season, Thomas has legitimately put himself in the conversation for most underrated player in the league (Aleksander Barkov, your time is over).
With 86 points, Thomas ranked 21st in the league in scoring thanks to a 21-point improvement over his 65-point season in 2022-23. Still, it’s not farfetched to think that Thomas could approach the century mark this season.
Despite the career-best point total, it actually wasn’t Thomas’ best season at five on five. According to Natural Stat Trick, Thomas had 2.26 points per 60 minutes at five on five last season, which trailed both 2021-22 (2.94) and 2019-20 (2.46) in terms of production.
With Thomas’ added responsibility and minutes last season, if he had produced at the same rate as his career best in 2021-22, Thomas would have finished with about 58 points just at five on five. That’s a 13-point improvement over the 45 he actually turned in and would almost single-handedly get Thomas to the 100-point mark if his special teams and empty-net numbers remained the same.
Reaching 100 points isn’t a necessary checkpoint for Thomas to prove that the Blues can eventually become a contender again.
The Panthers didn’t have a 100-point producer on their roster when they won the Stanley Cup (although Matthew Tkachuk did it twice before in his career). The Golden Knights didn’t have one. Neither did Colorado, though Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen have done so since winning the Cup in 2022. Of course, the Blues didn’t even have a player reach 80 points in 2018-19 when they won the Cup.
But more players are reaching 100 points in a season. In the past three seasons, 18 different players have hit the century mark. Fifteen of them did so for the first time, and almost all of them made big jumps from the season before to reach triple digits.
On average, those 15 players produced 83.12 points per 82 games in the season before they hit 100. That includes players like Vancouver’s J.T. Miller (83.01 point pace before reaching 103 points) and Dallas’ Jason Robertson (87.54 before a 109-point season), who made similar jumps to what Thomas could be looking at.
If Thomas is to do it, you might have to look for an increase in his goal-scoring. Thomas had a career-high 26 goals last season, but a forward hasn’t hit 100 points without scoring 30 goals since Henrik Sedin (29 goals, 83 assists) in 2009-10. Since 2000, the only forwards to do so have been Sedin, Joe Thornton and Peter Forsberg.
A Blues player hasn’t hit 100 points since Brendan Shanahan had 102 in 1993-94