Doug Armstrong enters his ninth season as the Blues’ GM on Friday. But with a new year upon us, especially with the new faces he’s added, he had the night-before-the-first-day-of-school feeling in his stomach Thursday.



“Yeah, I think that every season ‘hope springs eternal,'” Armstrong told The Athletic. “There’s 31 teams that like their prospects, and they like what they did over the summer. But the reality is, 49 percent of us are going to be unhappy at the end of the season because we’re going to miss the playoffs. We don’t want to be in that group.



“I think you’re excited about what you have, but you also understand that you need to perform. You need to be ready the first day of camp and we’ve got to get to work right away to make sure that we’re in that group of 16, and then move our way up from that point.”



The Blues will be on the ice at 10 a.m. at the St. Louis Ice...