ST. LOUIS – The St. Louis Blues have parted ways with head coach Craig Berube, the only coach to lead the franchise to a Stanley Cup title in its half-century-plus history.

The Blues announced late Tuesday evening that Berube was relieved of duties as head coach, a decision made public just hours after the team’s season-worst fourth straight loss and perhaps with heightened concerns over the future of the franchise.

St. Louis has named Drew Bannister as the interim head coach. He had been serving as the head coach of the Springfield Thunderbirds, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Blues. Bannister will take over as the 27th head coach in Blues history.

“It’s not a great day, but it’s a new day, and now we move forward,” said Blues general manager Doug Armstrong during a Wednesday press conference on the decision.

This marks the first midseason coaching change for the Blues in nearly half a decade and the first time since 2017 that Berube is not part of the St. Louis coaching staff. Berube is the third NHL head coach fired this season, with the Edmonton Oilers and Minnesota Wild previously shaking up their coaching staffs.

Berube spent parts of six seasons as the Blues head coach, a tenure that ended with a 206-132-44 record. His 206 victories are the third-most among all St. Louis head coaches, only trailing Ken Hitchcock (248) and Joel Quenneville (307).

Beurbe replaced Mike Yeo as the interim head coach in November 2018, guiding a team that sat dead last in points nearly halfway through that campaign to its first and only Stanley Cup title several months later.

Berube coached the Blues to four consecutive playoff berths from 2019-2022, but tougher times have fallen on the franchise since then.

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Last season, the Blues fared 37-38-7 for 81 points, their worst finish in nearly a decade in a half. After Tuesday’s loss, marking Berube’s final game coach, the Blues sit below the .500 mark at 13-14-1 (27 points) with roughly one-third of the season complete.

Armstrong says the recent four-game skid didn’t inspire confidence that the Blues were about to turn a corner.

“Last night’s game against a depleted Detroit team that was tired looked a lot like [facing] a depleted Columbus team that was tired and a depleted Chicago team. There just wasn’t a feeling that something was going to change today if we just came back to work that would make tomorrow different,” said Armstrong.

Andy Strickland, a Blues reporter for Bally Sports Midwest, pointed out several concerns with this year’s squad during a recent one-on-one chat with FOX 2 Sports Director Martin Kilcoyne. The power play is still among the league’s worst. Line assignments have been inconsistent on a game-to-game basis. And the team continues to lose key pieces from the Cup-clinching team each year with few new on-ice leaders emerging to help St. Louis to build an identity.

“You hope that they find some consistency, and they don’t lose one, win one, then lose a couple in a row,” said Strickland to Kilcoyne on last Sunday’s Sports Final. “Because, as you know, things can go south very quickly, and you can find yourself out of a playoff picture in a hurry.”

For instance, the Blues began last season on a three-game winning streak before dropping the next eight contests, and they couldn’t gain significant ground for playoff hopes after that. Tuesday’s loss was the fourth straight, now greater than the Blues’ longest winning steak this season of three games.

There have been some other odd trends with this season’s team as well. Twice during their recent four-game losing streak, including Tuesday’s 6-4 loss to the Detroit Red Wings, the Blues rallied ahead after early deficits only to let leads slip away late in games. St. Louis has also yet to win a game in which they trailed after the first period or didn’t score first.

“At some point you have to make changes,” said Armstrong. “It’s not something I wanted to do, that I wanted to start the season having to do, but it’s an area that we find ourselves. … It cost a great man his role on the team because things weren’t changing.”

Armstrong says he waited for things to settle after Tuesday’s loss then informed Berube of the coaching change in a closed-door chat. Armstrong says Berube wasn’t surprised and handled the tough news well.

“We’ve built a friendship over the years, and it’s difficult to have that talk with him last night,” said Armstrong. “He’s a true professional. He will regroup and land on his feet. He’s too good of a coach not to be in this league.”

“Craig Berube is a great man and will land on his feet quickly. Will always be revered in this town for leading [the Blues] to their 1st Stanley Cup,” said Strickland via Twitter. “But obvious things have been trending in the wrong direction. Doug Armstrong hasn’t hesitated in the past and isn’t now.”

Berube’s departure is perhaps a somber reminder of challenges ahead for the organization, particularly with roster construction.

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It could be difficult for the Blues to bolster depth over the next few years with several players signed to long-term deals on no-trade clauses and very little available cap space. St. Louis also had the sixth-oldest roster entering this season, oftentimes leaving them disadvantaged in speed compared to younger rebuilding and retooling rosters. The current core has also had a hard time reaching the bar of key veterans lost in recent seasons, like Alex Pietrangelo, David Perron, and Ryan O’Reilly.

These are developments that general manager Doug Armstrong shoulders more than anyone particularly on the coaching staff, but as organizational setbacks mount in a results-oriented business, Berube bears the blunt and is no longer the Blues head coach.

Armstrong took accountability to some degree for the Blues’ recent setbacks and Berube’s firing, saying, “I feel personally responsible.” Armstrong says the move should have everyone in the organization, including himself, on guard.

“You come to an organization because you want to make it better, and you want to leave it in a better spot,” said Armstrong. “When I came here [in 2008], we were better for a long time. If I get fired in the next hour, or get hit by a bus, I don’t feel today I’ve left it any better than where I found it. And that’s an awful feeling.”

Meanwhile, interim head coach Drew Bannister will report to St. Louis on Wednesday and coach his first game Thursday as the Blues host the Ottawa Senators, according to a news release from the Blues.

Bannister has served as the Thunderbirds’ coach for the last three seasons, helping the Blues’ AHL affiliate to the Calder Cup Final in 2022. Bannister had 164 games of NHL experience from 1996-2002 and has taken on various professional hockey coaching roles since 2012 in the AHL and Ontario Hockey League.

Armstrong also announced that Brad Richards, a former Stanley Cup champion with the Tampa Bay Lightning, would join the roster as a powerplay consultant and offer suggestions to improve play on the man advantage.

Berube, was roughly midway through a three-year contract extension that carried through the 2024-25 season.

Prior to Berube’s dismissal and earlier in the 2023 calendar year, the Blues also fired assistant coaches Craig McTavish and Mike Van Ryn. Another key assistant, Jim Montgomery, left the Blues for a coaching job with the Boston Bruins after the 2021-22 season.

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