ST. LOUIS — Pavel Buchnevich, whose fantasy football team is named “The Buchenator,” won the league championship in the St. Louis Blues’ locker room last season.
“Yes, champ!” Buchnevich said, smiling. “I had a couple good players, and a couple sleeper picks. I didn’t know those guys, but they did a good job.”
How about this season?
“This year? S—!” he said. “I’m 0-2, and I got smoked. My opponents have 130 points and 145 points, and it’s hard to beat 145. I knew we were going to have draft, and I was supposed to read some article a couple of hours before. But I never did, so I drafted the same guys I had last year. Seventh round, I just quit (caring) about the draft. I don’t know those players. But I will be in playoffs, so we’ll see.”
Buchnevich is equally optimistic about the Blues’ chances of making the playoffs in 2024-25, and anyone who sits down with him for 30 minutes, as The Athletic did this week, will quickly realize there may not be anyone who cares more.
He knows that the team’s top players, including himself, have to perform. He knows that he has to make some personal sacrifices to do what’s best for the Blues. He knows that he has to be a leader, even if it’s not completely comfortable for him. He knows that general manager Doug Armstrong has to continue building a competitive roster through trades, free agency, offer sheets and, yes, paying attention throughout the entire draft.
Buchnevich has faith that all of this is possible, and that’s why this summer, at age 29, he signed a six-year, $48 million contract extension with the retooling organization.
“I love it here,” he said. “It’s easy to live and people are always supportive in the organization and in town. You talk to them, and they love the Blues and love the hockey. I love that passion. I don’t want to be one year here, one year there. I like the guys on the team, and hopefully the guys like me. I try to do my best to win.”
Phone a friend……. who’s coming with you to see Buch at Blues & Brews 🤙
🎟️: https://t.co/h1I2uQUEnQ pic.twitter.com/r76uicumvx
— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) September 18, 2024
The speculation surrounding Buchnevich’s future began midway through the 2023-24 season. He had another year left on his contract, and if unsigned by the NHL trade deadline, there was a chance the team would decide to move him. But the Blues hung onto him, and the plan was for the two sides would meet in the offseason.
The first talk was in Buffalo, N.Y., before the league combine. The group included Buchnevich, his agent Todd Diamond, Armstrong and newly promoted assistant GM Alexander Steen. The conversation wasn’t about money.
“Honestly, they asked if I want to play center or I want to play wing,” Buchnevich recalled. “I said, ‘If I have to play center, I will play center. It’s not a big deal. Just get the two best (wingers) you can, and it’s fine.’”
A third-round pick in 2013, Buchnevich has played eight seasons in the NHL, and for all but a few months of that, he has been as a winger. But late in 2022-23, former Blues coach Craig Berube tried him out at center.
“When ‘Chief’ put me there at first, people were thinking it’s a prank,” Buchnevich said. “Everybody was laughing.”
In 2021-22, he had set career highs in goals (30), assists (46) and points (76) as a winger, and playing in the middle might take away from his scoring totals. Not to mention that he’d be asked to take more faceoffs, and his career winning percentage in the circle was about 25 percent at the time.
As expected, the initial results were mixed, and Buchnevich continued to bounce back and forth between the two positions.
“It’s hard to play when you play one game at wing, one game at center,” he said. “When I play on the wing, I can read the game and go for odd-man rushes. At center, I have to be more responsible defensively, and when I get the puck, send my wingers to go. It’s like if you had to learn to write with your left hand. It just takes time.”
After many in-game chats with Blues center Robert Thomas — why he positioned himself a certain way, why he defended the way he did — Buchnevich began to get the hang of it last season. His faceoff winning percentage of 37.4 percent didn’t spark confidence when he slipped into the circle, but it was an improvement.
More importantly, though, the Blues were seeing an uptick in their winning percentage with Buchnevich at center. They told him that at the meeting in Buffalo.
“It’s the stats,” he said. “It’s over .600 (points percentage) or something like that.”
So that’s what sold Buchnevich on re-signing with the Blues and sticking at center — not the $8 million annual average value (AAV) that he likely could’ve gotten on the open free-agent market after this season.
“Army called my agent and said, ‘This is our deal: five (years) by $8 million,’” Buchnevich said. “I asked for six and that was it. It was an easy conversation. I never asked about money. I still feel like a kid when you show up at hockey like 6, 7 years old, you don’t think about money. I just love the game and I want to play. I want to win. I want to beat the other team.”
Speaking of which, there was something else that sold Buchnevich on staying.
“Before the signing, Army said, ‘I’ll give you my word. I’ll try my best to make the team better — not in the long-term, but in the short-term, too,’” he said. “I think he did.”
Buchnevich was most impressed with Armstrong’s ability to land defenseman Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway from the Edmonton Oilers via offer sheets. He was back home in Russia when he got the news from his agent.
“I was like, ‘Oh, wow!’” Buchnevich said. “It was an interesting moment to see if (the Oilers) were going to match.”
They didn’t, and for the past few weeks, Buchnevich has been preparing for the upcoming season alongside the two new players.
“I see Broberg in the gym, and he’s like a beast,” he said. “Imagine (Colton Parayko) and him, two units. It’s like five years ago when you’re coming to play St. Louis, and it’s (Jay) Bouwmeester and Parayko, those towers. It’s not fun.”
“Those guys (Holloway and Broberg) are 22, 23 years old, and they’re going to be good players in a couple years. We don’t have to wait another five or six years for young guys to come, so it’s good for us.”
Buchnevich also likes the depth that Armstrong has added to the roster, with forwards Mathieu Joseph, Alexandre Texier, Radek Faksa and defensemen Ryan Suter and Pierre-Olivier Joseph.
“I feel like it’s good for competition for every position, and not everybody is safe,” he said. “You have to show up in camp and show up in the games and earn your spot.”
But first and foremost, Buchnevich knows that for the Blues to be back in the playoffs, their best players have to be better than they were last season.
“Overall maybe (Thomas) had a great season, but other guys played kind of below where we expect,” he said. “It starts with me, (Thomas), (Brayden Schenn) and (Jordan Kyrou). Our big guys have to give us a chance to win.”
In 80 games last season, averaging nearly 20 minutes of ice time per game, Buchnevich had 27 goals and 63 points. After a career-high 21.1 percent shooting clip the previous year, a regression was likely, but a dropoff to 13 percent gave him his lowest mark since the 2019-20 season with the New York Rangers (10.8 percent).
How did Buchnevich feel like he played?
“Up and down,” he said. “Lots of stretches where I didn’t produce as much, but it’s hockey. When you’re losing games, it’s hard to score. When you’re down 4-1, the team against you is just going to sit back and it’s hard to score.
“It’s all about confidence. When you’re confident, and it’s a two-on-one, you’re going to make a play. But when you’re not confident, you just chuck the puck off the glass and go. Basically nothing good happens, especially for a player like me.”
But Buchnevich feels like he continued to work hard last season, which Blues fans have recognized about him over the years and come to appreciate.
“People don’t like lazy,” he said. “If they see guys playing for the team, they’re not going to b—-. On the ice, I just try my best to win. I don’t want to lose. I understand sometimes I get mad because I don’t want to lose. I have to control my emotions, but maybe sometimes you need that spark. People see that I care. Everybody sees that I want to win, and it brings us together.”
Buchnevich lets his personality do his leading because he admits his accent makes it difficult to be vocal.
“It’s hard for me to talk because I’ve got broken English, especially in a big group to say that stuff,” he said. “When I start talking too quick, it’s like, ‘What the f— is he saying?’ The best thing I can do is show up on the ice and care and do the right stuff.”
Like playing center when the team needs you to play center.
“I’m going to try my best, and hopefully it’s going to work for the team,” he said. “If it means more wins, it’s more important. So reps, reps, reps and I get better. It’ll be fine. It’ll just take some time.”
And if Buchnevich’s scoring drops off playing in the middle?
“Would you rather me score 40 goals and we don’t make the playoffs, or I score 10 goals and we make the playoffs?” he asked.
Much like his 0-2 fantasy football team, Buchnevich believes when the time comes, he’ll be there.
“It’s a cliche, but it’s not acceptable to be two years without playoffs,” he said. “The last couple of seasons, we win three, lose seven, win five, lose seven. We have to start right away winning games. It’s hard when you’re down six or seven points in the playoff (standings) to catch someone. We can’t start in November. We have to start in October and win some games.”
(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
