Where Do Blues Fans Rank in ESPN’s Sports Misery Index?
The St. Louis Blues’ long-awaited Stanley Cup victory in 2019 was a moment of pure euphoria for the franchise and its supporters. After decades of heartbreak and near-misses, the win felt like the closing of a painful chapter. However, as six seasons have passed, that magical run feels increasingly like a distant memory — and the hunger for another championship has returned.
Sports, by nature, create more heartbreak than glory. Every year, just one team emerges as champion, while the rest are left with “what-ifs” and the hope that next season will be different. The NHL is no exception, and while the Florida Panthers have basked in back-to-back Stanley Cups recently, most fanbases have lived through varying degrees of frustration.
To quantify that frustration, ESPN introduced the Sports Misery Index. This tool evaluates fan happiness based on regular-season and playoff results, as well as how well a team performs relative to expectations heading into a season. A fresh championship win can cushion a disappointing year, while teams stuck in long droughts or chronic underperformance see their misery levels soar.
When it comes to the Blues, the numbers tell an interesting story. Over the last 15 years, they sit in the bottom 10 of NHL fan misery with a score of 41. That’s low enough to mark them as one of the less-suffering fanbases — but not quite in “happy” territory. Teams with even less misery include the Chicago Blackhawks (39), Los Angeles Kings (36), Seattle Kraken (36), Colorado Avalanche (33), and Pittsburgh Penguins (18). Meanwhile, the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Vegas Golden Knights all enjoy a perfect zero on the misery scale thanks to recent championships.
Just above the Blues are the Boston Bruins (41) and Washington Capitals (42), before a noticeable jump to the Edmonton Oilers at 58. The takeaway? If your team has won a Cup in the past decade and a half — or is still in its early expansion years like the Kraken — you get a sizable “misery discount.”
For Blues fans, the 2019 Cup win remains a priceless memory, a reminder that winning truly changes the narrative. But as time moves on and the team chases another deep playoff run, patience is tested. If the drought stretches much longer, the misery index might start ticking upward once again.
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