OverDrive - Armstrong on Canada's selection process, Bedard and Celebrini's impression and the Blues making moves

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Hockey Canada and St. Louis Blues General Manager Doug Armstrong joined OverDrive to discuss the selection process for Canada, the scouting of the games, Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini looking for a spot, the formation of the roster, the Blues seeking deals and more.

Listen to Tech Talk with Mark Saltman, Sundays at 5 p.m. on News Talk 1010 and the IHeart Radio app. The show that makes sense of the ever-changing world of technology. Brought to you by LGCareQ, keeping the life's good promise with elevated customer care. GM of the Blues, GM of Team Canada, here's Doug Armstrong. Do you know where that stands, Doug? Can you get yourself a medal in February or how does that work? No, just the athletes get it, and I actually think that's what it should be. they're doing all the work.

Army, wouldn't you like in your basement or something to have some medals hanging from somewhere? Like, come on. Yeah, well, you know what? You get the rings. That's enough. Okay, that's true. Yeah, we can get you a replica one, right?

We'll find a way to make that work for you. But how are you balancing your time? I mean, it's a big commitment on, you know, you got your own, obviously, issues going in St. Louis. You guys have not got off to the start. I'm sure you were hoping for, and yet you're getting real good. close to go time in terms of picking this

Canadian team, how are you balancing both parties right now? Yeah, obviously I was hoping it wouldn't be as difficult as it is right now with my day job. But we're out, you know, we have a group of five of us out watching lots of games

and quite honestly when your team's up and running, there's not a lot you can do, you observe you. I'm a big believer that, you know, you don't tell the players what you're going to do, they tell you what you should do and so now we're reacting to our position in the league with the blues. And as we're doing that, we're out scouting players for the Olympics

and that hand-in-hand scouting for the blues at the same time. Army, what exactly would you be looking for in the second part of the question? Is it easy to just try to find something that's not there when you already know the players so well and you're going out to watch them? Yeah, I think what we're trying to do is that an Olympic question? or just... Yeah, an Olympic question, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I think what we tried to do is just, you know, go out and find and look at some of these younger players for the first month of the season. And then we had a meeting and now we sort of honed our list down to a more workable number and anyone not on the list had to find us, you know, that next month. And now we're going to meet again in December and we're hope to come out of that one with probably 70 to 80% of the team in our month. mine picked and then sit with the coaches and find out, okay, you know, what areas do we need? We'll go over all the analytics of penalty, kill, power, play, faceoffs, things that could help

round out a team. But right now, we're just, we're trying to understand we, like, the resumes are deep and long. We don't have to look at some of those players, but some of these younger players that are coming into their own right now, we want to give them full opportunity if they have a good three months to get legitimate opportunities to make this team, and that's what we're doing now. scouting of the blues factor in. Do you abstain from that? Do you contribute to it?

How does that work if someone's got an opinion on Bennington, Thomas Pareko, where do you stand on that? Yeah, what we've done in the past, and I was fortunate to work with Steve Eisenman in 10 and 14, is that if you're talking about a player

on a certain team, you go last. You let the other guy describe what they see, how they see, and everyone's very respectful of what you Look, we're probably all a little harder on our own players than the other people are. But, you know, you have to understand that you're doing this for Team Canada and that overrides your personal feelings for your players. And you have to be honest because our goal is to go and put a team that we think can compete for a medal,

the gold medal obviously, and that's what we need to do. We have to be honest about our own players. Doug, you mentioned some of the younger players. How much have Celebrini and Bedard in particular, maybe change the way you're thinking about including one or both and maybe the conversation around some of the forwards you might bring? Yeah, they've done a great job, and as I said, they found us. We didn't have to go out and look for them.

Both, you know, young players, both having their career years, both have taken their franchises from, you know, they're both fighting for playoffs, but now probably a little bit further ahead than some people have thought, and they're the lead horses there, and they're certainly in this equation as we, as we pull this together, and then again, it's taking it back to John Cooper and his staff on, okay, here are your power play people, where do these guys fit in, penalty kill, where do these guys fit in,

how do they round out our roster, what, you know, we watch who they play with with their NHL teams, why they're having success with those teams, do we have the complement players that can provide them with that? And also, can they provide the players that are there, you know, complement what we have? So it's a, it's a jigsaw puzzle. I think there's going to be changes from the Four Nations, which is normal. When you look at the last, you know, it's only been less than a year since the four nations. So we know a lot of those players well, but as we said, some of these younger players are coming on, and some of the players that were on that team aren't playing to the caliber they were when they got selected,

and that's just the nature of the beast, and that's why we're out scouting. Army, is one of the questions, or, you know, we talk about this every day, and one of the possibilities is a guy like Connor Bedard, can he go to this tournament and play a different role? Does that make sense of even having that conversation, or you want Connor Bedard doing Bedard things, not playing, doing something different that he's asked, like becoming a checker?

Yeah, so that's a very good question. You say, okay, if Connor Bardard does Conradard things, is he better than ex-player that's doing that now? And everyone has to play a different role. We do want to have a highly skilled team, you know, on all four lines and all the defensemen. But there has to be some people that can kill penalties. There has to be people that can play different roles. You know, I think one of the things that I took away from the four nations that runs to our day job is if you win both ends, the front of the net and both ends, you're likely going to have success.

And so we need people that can play inside the dots that can play with strength and power in front of the net. offensively and defensively, and that's where the goals are going to be scored. They don't come, you know, they're flashy plays, but at the end of the day, when the game's on the line, you have to go inside, and we just want players that can complement that 200-foot game playing inside the dots also. With Doug Armstrong, and, you know, the young guys, they weren't necessarily, they weren't really on the radar for the Four Nations because of their age. You know, Bedard, Celebrini was a rookie last year. But there were veterans, you know, who were, that were well aware of that had really good years last year that didn't make it.

You look at Mark Shifley. You look at Tom Wilson, who's been a unicorn in this league for five or six years, Nick Suzuki. What was the message to those guys who were veterans, play inside the dots, big boys, know how to win? They didn't make it at the Four Nations. Was there a message directed towards them in particular as to how you get onto the radar this time because all three of those guys are having great seasons this year? Yeah, they are.

And, you know, we just looked at how they played after. the four nations, how they played if they went to the end of the playoffs, how they played in the playoffs, if not how they do it to the world championships. And then we got out and scouted them the first two months of the year and we'll do one more month. And yeah, it's great

competition. And we had, all those players were invited to our orientation camp. There was conversations on what we're looking to do, how we want to play, and they had to go out and do their job. And they're making it very difficult. Those players you've talked about with probably four or five more

guys that went to the worlds that have done or having good years that provide some of that size and power that we're talking about that are going to make those December meetings very interesting. With Doug Armstrong, GM of Team Canada and the Blues, you know, as for your day job, we just saw you guys roll through town a week ago. And, you know, again, you guys, you're 7, 10, and 6. It hasn't been a great season. I know you've spoken about it. I know your head coach, Jim Montgomery, spoken about it. we're 22 games in you know oh Jonas noodles we always talk about U.S. Thanksgiving that's kind of a line

where you can truly determine the team you have yet it's a league where just everything seems frozen all the time there's not a lot that can happen in free agency throughout the summer as a guy that has been active before and maybe you want to be active now do you feel like it's even possible with

the parity in the league and the salary cap restraints that come with trying to make deals yeah I think what we're finding now is a salary cap doesn't play the issue it did in COVID. We saw the big increase this year. Obviously, the pending understricted free agents are taking the line sure of that. But I think trades are going to be easier to make now than they have been in the past because of the increased cap for sure for the next few years and hopefully for the league moving forward. And I think there's probably more buyers than sellers just because of the parity in the league

that we see right now. And, you know, as I said earlier, I'm a big believer that the players tell you what you're supposed to do with your team. I've been on both sides of it. In Dallas, I think my five or six years there, we bought every year. We were averaging about 110 points a year, and we bought every year, and we only got to pass the first round once. You know, but you try and respect and show the players that if they do their job

up until a certain date, you'll provide them with some support. And then also if you're a team that you had one expectation and it went the different way that, you know, you respond to that and you're willing to look at that future players or changing out things. And then there's going to be a group of teams that are in the playoffs. They're like somewhere between, say, fifth and tenth place that are going to, don't believe that they're championship caliber team. They'll likely just stay pad and maybe work around the edges. So I think everybody looks a little bit differently. I know that there's some managers love to get ahead of this as soon as they can to give the time to give the players time

to accommodate with their new group. It's going to be a little more difficult this year with the long break in February. But, you know, as I said, you know, we have to listen to what our players are telling us, and right now we're three games under 500 and not playing strong hockey. And their job is, as players,

to Jim and myself and Alex Dean, is to, as we're exploring what we should do, go on a big heater there, and it changes our mindset. So, Army, take us behind the scenes, I mean, as much as you can. What happens if a general manager in the league sends a note out to everyone else saying, we're open for business because that term has been tossed around a few times the last week or so? Like, what does that mean? If a GM floats that out there, does their phone just ring off the hook and, you know, the seagulls are flying?

and everywhere trying to pick away at everything? Or how does that go? What happens when that situation goes down? I think everyone looks at things differently, some, you know, on how you get information out there. I'm not sure that what's reported is factual quite a bit of the time, quite honestly. I've heard things that we've been involved in, and I laugh. I haven't talked to that manager in two months.

And so you're not really sure how some of this gets out there. but everybody, you know, we know how teams are doing. We try and look in, like I know when I look at a team, I try and instead of just making a phone call to say, what are you looking for, I look at what we're willing to do. Do we have the things that I think they might need? And then you start conversations like that. Everybody handles a little bit differently,

but I try and do, the blue is trying to do some of that homework first, but so they're not just like throwing darts. well we're looking forward to seeing what happens here not only with your own team throughout the league but as we get closer to the team Canada announcement it's really exciting i mean it's going to be awesome to have the NHL is back at the Olympic games and it's rapidly approaching so good luck with it I'm sure we'll catch up if not before right after you make the team announcement and thanks as always for doing us guys I always appreciate you having me on and all the best you got it Doug Armstrong GM of team Canada and the blues it's beginning to Sound a lot like Christmas with IHeart the holidays. Non-stop Christmas music 24-7. All your festive favorites. Unwrap the magic of the season.

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