SEATTLE — Not that Drew Bannister isn’t eager to start his first full season with the St. Louis Blues, but he doesn’t seem to have all that much sentimentality about Tuesday’s season opener in Seattle being his first official game as non-interim coach.
“It’s just the start of the season,” Bannister said, when asked about the significance. “I don’t know if it means any more to me. I think we’re a team that has turned the page, and we have a belief, a mission — we’re ready to go. But certainly, for me, I’m excited to be a part of this team.”
After Bannister coached the Blues for 54 games with the interim tag in 2023-24, his focus now is on a team whose success or failure will determine whether he’s still behind the bench at the end of his two-year contract.
Fans know a bit about Bannister from last season, but to find out more about his approach in 2024-25, The Athletic went back further in his past to ask those who’ve worked with him closely and can offer some insight.
Kyle Raftis is the general manager of the Ontario Hockey League’s Soo Greyhounds and hired Bannister to coach the junior hockey team in 2015. Ryan Ward is the head coach of the United States Hockey League’s Youngstown (Ohio) Phantoms and worked as an assistant on Bannister’s staff with the Soo and the AHL San Antonio Rampage.
Both spoke to Banniser’s patience, planning and lack of stubbornness, and while they acknowledged there’s a difference between coaching in juniors, the minors and the NHL, they saw parallels to the situation in St. Louis that could bode well.
In 2015, Raftis was searching for the Soo’s next head coach after Sheldon Keefe left to take a job with the AHL Toronto Marlies. The Greyhounds had gone 54-12-2 in Keefe’s final season and lost in the conference final to Connor McDavid’s Erie Otters. They had 10 players on the roster who were either NHL draft picks or signed to play in the league the following year, but the fan base didn’t want a first-time coach like Bannister to lead them through a new phase.
“It was a tough one to handle when Keefe left because it’s junior hockey and you’re always kind of rebuilding, but people thought we should’ve gone with somebody who was a head coach already,” Raftis said. “But Drew really stood out to me because he was somebody who was a very analytical thinker. When you talked to him, he didn’t use more words than needed to be said. He didn’t say something without intent behind it. He was super prepared for what he wanted to do and there was always a plan in place.
“Obviously, he’s established himself now, but you could see that from the first day.”
Bannister coached the Soo for three seasons, and after losing twice in the second round of the playoffs, the Greyhounds were the regular-season champions in 2017-18 and broke through in the postseason with a trip to the finals, where they fell to the Hamilton Bulldogs.
Along the way, Raftis witnessed an ego-less coach who had ways of getting everyone to work together and pulling the most out of players.
“When you sit down with him, he’s not a guy who’s loud, but he can command the room,” Raftis said. “He’s not a guy that’s just going to come in and yell, ‘Let’s work hard! Let’s get going!’ Everybody thinks it’s a new-age thing with athletes where they only have their own goals. Everyone has their own goals, and it’s just how can we get them all on the same page. I thought Drew was always really good at gathering information and then saying, ‘OK, now how do we get that player to understand that?’ He was good in a sense where it was, ‘This is our plan,’ but it wasn’t stubborn like, ‘This is how I want it, and if you don’t do it, you’re out the door.’
“I think that’s probably what they’re looking for in St. Louis — that connection — and that’s where he can command the group really well.”
Ward watched that from the Soo bench, where he was an assistant coach in Bannister’s last two seasons with the Greyhounds, and later in San Antonio with the Rampage.
“The thing with Drew was how much he puts into his players, and you saw that with the young players in the Soo,” Ward said. “He’s patient with their development, pushing them along with their own personal curve. He allows them to make mistakes and not live in fear of not playing. He lets his players fail forward, where they know that he’s going to let them run their race as far as the experiences that they need to go through to become a whole hockey player.
“Drew does a great job of setting his expectations in how he believes a player, or a team, should play and holding them accountable to that. I always say that happiness is reality divided by expectations, and when Drew sets the expectations for you and gets you to live up to them, you’re a pretty happy guy. And when you have that between a coach and a player, there begins to be a level of trust.”
Ward followed Bannister to San Antonio, where he watched this unfold with current Blues forward Jordan Kyrou, who had 25 goals and 58 points in 63 games under Bannister from 2018 to 2020.
“Obviously, Rouzy is supremely talented with the puck and when he was coming out of junior, there were things away from the puck that young players need to work on,” Ward said. “I think Drew did a great job on a day-to-day basis of letting Rouzy use his skill but showing him what you need to do away from the puck to play in the NHL. That’s a long process, and for a young player, it’s a lot to take in and there’s a lot of pressure.
“But Drew allows them to genuinely be themselves and through time it gives players a lot of confidence. He does a great job of making sure all of his players know that he has their best interest in mind, and that was an everyday thing with Drew and Rouzy in San Antonio.”
And what about the Blues’ veterans — the 3o-somethings with long contracts who see Bannister doesn’t have a lot of NHL experience?
Raftis acknowledged he only viewed this from the junior hockey level, but he doesn’t see it as an issue.
“Drew will be able to say, ‘Hey, this is what I need from you and this is what I can provide for you,’” Raftis said. “He’s so competitive, he’s going to want to win games every night, so whoever can give him the best chance, he’s going to be pushing for it. In the management seat, you can talk about retools or rebuilds, but you’re not going into these game thinking, ‘How are we going to develop these guys?’ The guys in the room know who should be out there, and they respond to who gives them the best chance.
“He is going to be somebody who wants to win, and that’s what attracted him to getting that job.”
In San Antonio, Bannister had Chris Thorburn, then 35, for a majority of the season with the Rampage, and while Thorburn wasn’t a core player on the team, the coach valued his presence immensely.
“He gives his older players a voice and treats them with the respect they need,” Ward said. “He does a great job of talking to them and formulating a plan and leaning on his leadership. No one can ever question his character, his work ethic, his loyalty and his willingness to be vulnerable in the sense that he doesn’t think he has all the answers and he wants feedback. He has a vision, but he wants to make everyone part of that process, and over time that creates a level of accountability, where you’re not wanting to let each other down. That garners a ton of respect in the locker room, and he does that extraordinarily well.”
So could Bannister be more than just a coach who gets the Blues through some potentially lean years? Is he more than a retool coach?
“I have no question that Drew will be able to push them over the top when they get there,” Raftis said. “Coaching is always the first thing that everyone questions, but I think it’s going to be that his day-in and day-out (work ethic pushes) the Blues into that level. I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people.”
Ward pointed to the fact that in Bannister’s fourth season coaching in the AHL (his first with Springfield Thunderbirds), he took that team to the finals as well.
“I would say forget about NHL experience,” he said. “If you look at Drew’s track record as a coach, it may not have been instantaneous, but there’s a steady progression and a byproduct of that is winning. Ultimately, the best part about Drew is that he sees the forest through the trees and the diligence it takes. But as Drew’s process is trusted, no one can argue with the fact that he’s won everywhere he’s gone. He’s proven that he can make those opportunities into great success stories.
“I have no doubt that Drew will do the same in St. Louis.”
(Photo: Josh Lavallee / NHLI via Getty Images)
