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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Murderbotmedia on 2025-07-20 07:23:23+00:00.
(Full disclosure: I am a Blues fan. I tried to keep my personal opinions out of the write-up as much as possible.)
The Basics:
The National Hockey League, or NHL, is a technically-international professional ice hockey league located in North America. Considered to be the top hockey league in the world, players from 20 countries strap razors to their feet and hit chunks of rubber at heavily-padded nutcases goalies in the hopes of helping their team win one of the oldest sports trophies in the world: the Stanley Cup.
(A note: the Stanley Cup is 132 years old and has a lot of traditions and superstitions surrounding it, the biggest one being that, as a hockey player, if you haven’t won it, you don’t touch it. It must be earned. While yes, it has been forgotten on the side of the road, dropped, and thrown into pools, it’s also regarded with reverence and respect. Watching grown men crying and hugging and screaming “I love you!” at each other while they hoist the 3-foot-long, 35-pound monster over their heads is an incredibly touching thing to watch.)
There are 32 teams split into two conferences: East and West. Each conference is further split into two divisions: Atlantic and Metropolitan in the East, Central and Pacific in the West. Since 1995, every team plays 82 games each season and, with some caveats because the NHL loves having exceptions and qualifiers to every single rule (I’m not kidding. I’d make a post about it except it’d just be the NHL rulebook), the top 3 teams in each division plus a wild card team make the playoffs.
The playoffs are four best-of-seven rounds, with the final round being the only one that actually matters: The Stanley Cup Finals. Every player wants it. Every team wants it. Every fan wants their team to win it. Doesn’t matter if you’ve won it 24 times or never, that’s the dream.
The Losers:
By mid-November 2018, the St Louis Blues were…not doing too great. Yes, the season wasn’t even two months old, but with 12 losses in 19 games, it wasn’t looking good. The coach was fired and replaced with one of their assistant coaches, Craig Berube.
It didn’t help. By January 3, they were dead last, having won only 15 of 37 games. NHL seasons run October-April. If a team’s win-loss record is that bad by the halfway point, the odds of post-season success are basically nil.
The Girl:
In September 2018 Laila Anderson, an 11-year-old self-described Blues super fan, was diagnosed with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a rare autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain. She was given massive doses of steroids to combat the symptoms until a bone marrow donor was found in October. Then she started 10 weeks of chemotherapy to kill her immune system so the bone marrow transplant could take place. The St Louis Children’s Hospital held a Halloween charity event, and that’s where Laila met St Louis Blues’ defenseman Colton Parayko. They hit it off and became friends; Parayko even introduced her to the rest of the team.
The Goalies:
NHL teams are required to dress two goalies for every game; that is, there’s gotta be a guy sitting on the bench, geared up and ready to go, in addition to whoever’s actually minding the net. Since the NHL only permits 23 players on a team roster, teams tend to just have the two goalies, the starter and the backup. Jake Allen was the starting goaltender and Chad Johnson was the backup, and since at this point things couldn’t get any worse, Berube shuffled Johnson off to Anaheim and called in the backup goalie from the Blues’ minor league affiliate team, a 25-year-old named Jordan Binnington.
Binnington had been drafted 2011 and had been kicking around in the minor leagues ever since. This isn’t a slight on Binner; only about half the players who get drafted ever make the NHL. He’d put up solid statistics in the AHL, but that doesn’t always translate to success in the NHL. But again, their standings couldn’t get any worse, and something had to change.
The Song:
On January 6, the Blues were in Philadelphia for a game against the Flyers the next day. A group of players went to a bar, The Jacks NYB, to watch an NFL playoff game. Every commercial break, the DJ would play Gloria, a 1980’s disco hit by Laura Brannigan. (the song slaps, btw) and the whole place would go nuts. The players liked the song and the energy it gave to the bar and decided to adopt it as their victory song: when they won a game, they agreed, they’d play it in the locker room to celebrate.
The New Guy:
Jordan Binnington had his first start in an NHL game on January 7. He stopped all 25 shots and the Blues won 3-0. Gloria played in the locker room for the first time. For the next eight games, the Blues posted a record of 4-3-1. Finally, things were starting to look up. Binner was in net for 3 of those 4 wins and Allen was relegated to backup goalie.
On January 23, Jordan Binnington posted his fifth NHL win. They were going to end the month with more wins than losses for the first time that season.
The Hope:
On January 24, Laila had her bone marrow transplant. She’d be stuck in isolation in the hospital for the next month, as bone marrow transplants require a completely dead immune system, with the 3 months after at home under similar restrictions. Watching the Blues get better gave her hope and inspiration that she could get better; the team felt the same about her.
As January turned to February, “Play Gloria!” became a victory chant by players and fans alike, almost a prayer to the hockey gods. And it worked.
By February 20, the Blues had won 11 games in a row.
Gloria was everywhere: shirts, posters, the radio. Hope was rising.
By the end of the regular season, St Louis had done the unthinkable and gone from bottom of the league to not only third in the division, but third in the Western Conference: they were in the playoffs.
The Blues faced the Winnipeg Jets in the first round, beating them in 6 games. Round two they faced the Dallas Stars, squeaking out an overtime win to clinch the series in 7 games. After the second series win, a St Louis radio station played Gloria for 24 hours straight.
The Conference finals were played against the San Jose Sharks. The first two games were played in San Jose, with each team winning a game. The third game, at home in St Louis, had a surprise:
Laila Anderson’s doctors had decided that, as long …
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