ST. LOUIS -- It's picture day for the St. Louis Blues at Scottrade Center.

Everyone is here. GM Doug Armstrong. Head coach Ken Hitchcock, en route to a remarkable seventh season with 45 or more wins. Head trainer Ray Barile and strength and conditioning coach Nelson Ayotte. The players. Their families. Office staff. Even the Blues mascot is on hand.

If you are the wiseacre type, you might suggest there is only one thing missing from this picture. It stands about 35.25 inches tall, is shiny and has lots of names on it.

It's called the Stanley Cup. You might have heard of it.

The Blues know of such a trophy, but only from a distance. They are aware of it only in the abstract, what it might mean, what it might feel like. The "what-ifs" of dreams now carried forward for almost 50 years.

Part of the NHL's first major expansion, in 1967, the Blues are the last of those first expansion teams without a Stanley Cup. No NHL team has a longer current Cup drought. Moreover, they have not even flirted with the big prize. The Blues have not been to the Stanley Cup finals since 1970, when the league, in its infinite wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to have all the new teams in one grouping playing the Original Six teams, and the Blues made the finals in their first three seasons, getting swept each time.

They have failed to advance beyond the second round since 2001. But if you walk into a downtown establishment like Hair of The Dog, you'll find anticipation is percolating in St. Louis in an unprecedented fashion. A mural painted on a column in the Washington Street establishment features the World Series trophy, local landmarks and sports icons. There's also a blank outline of the Stanley Cup. Inside is written "Coming soon." The artist has been put on notice to fill in the outline the moment the Cup dream is realized.

"It's a long time; 1967's a long time," former NHL netminder Darren Pang, now a popular broadcast analyst for the Blues, told ESPN.com. "The Toronto Maple Leafs last won a Cup in 1967 and we know what it's like in Toronto listening to their fans. You'd think it's a thousand years."

But with the Blues aiming at setting franchise records for wins and points, there is reason to believe that this might be the season that all of that ends.

"Pressure, build-up, expectations, as high as ever right now," Pang said of the Blues.

Look up the definition of building an NHL winner and you might just see a picture of Armstrong and the Blues' familiar blue-note logo. The team has followed the blueprint step by step, drafting top building blocks such as Alex Pietrangelo, destined for Norris Trophies down the road, emerging young forwards Vladimir Tarasenko, Jaden Schwartz and cornerstone players such as captain David Backes and T.J. Oshie. There have been shrewd trades, including the acquisition of Jay Bouwmeester last season and, most recently, netminder Ryan Miller and forward Steve Ott.

All the team lacks is, well, the championship to go with the championship blue print.

"Let's say a couple of years ago you think Ryan Miller with a limited no-trade clause looks around and says, 'OK, that's the team I want to go to. And potentially that's the team I want to stay with'?" Pang asked. "You think Jay Bouwmeester gets traded here and before his contract expires, he signs an extension at a dollar value that is certainly a great deal for the Blues and it's a long-term good deal for him?

"Players have so many choices now. It's not about how good your towels are in your locker room. It's about how you're managed, whether the ownership is going to give you every opportunity to win, and it's about the city."

In the first period intermission of Saturday's game against Dallas, Hall of Famer Brett Hull, repatriated to the Blues as the team's executive vice president, poses for pictures with adoring fans. Hull won a Cup in Dallas but remains one of the most endearing of hockey stars in St. Louis. He believes the changes to the lineup coupled with the team's maturity over the past couple of seasons suggest good things are in the offing. Hull rhymes off the qualities he likes about this version of the Blues: Big, strong, disciplined.

"This team is as good, as playoff-built, as any team I've seen," Hull told ESPN.com.

But when it comes to success, the Blues are also a team that provides a kind of cautionary tale for all pro sports markets. In spite of the fact the team is near the top in the NHL in point production and considered one of a handful of strong Cup favorites, they do not sell out every single home game as a matter of course. The Blues rank 25th in the NHL in home attendance percentage, filling the Scottrade Center to 88.2 percent of capacity, on average (through last Thursday) and did not register their first sellout of the season until Dec. 28. They had just nine sellouts through Saturday's sold-out home date against Dallas.

Some of that is a function of a wacky schedule that saw a preponderance of home dates early in the season, when they were competing with the baseball Cardinals, who advanced again to the World Series in October. And Scottrade Center is a big barn, with a capacity of 19,150. And the team is no longer in the business of simply giving tickets away to artificially inflate attendance numbers, as was the case in the past.

But an undeniable factor in explaining why this building isn't filled to the rafters every night is the fact that the team has been on the verge of greatness several times and has never been able to get over the hump. The Blues were swept in the second round two years ago against the eventual Cup winners from Los Angeles, and then blew a 2-0 series lead against the Kings in the first round last spring.

"It's a blue-collar town," Armstrong explained. "We have to put a product on the ice. We're not a corporate-driven team."