51ºÚÁÏ

Growing up in Canada, hockey player Jake Neighbours would often his spend time on the bus to and from youth games learning American Sign Language from his friend and teammate, Ozzy Wiesblatt.

He wanted to better communicate with Wiesblatt’s parents, who are deaf.

Read the full transcript of Matthew DeFranks' weekly Blues chat.

Transcript

With the National Hockey League season pausing for the 4 Nations Face-Off, the also-rans are mulling big decisions.

See if this scenario sounds familiar:

Jordan Binnington grew up watching his Canadian heroes play on the international stage.

He’s quick to rattle off the memories he has of Team Canada in best-on-best tournaments. There’s the golden goal in 2010 in Vancouver, when Sidney Crosby scored in overtime of the gold medal game to beat the United States. There’s the Hall of Fame tandem of Martin Brodeur and Roberto Luongo in the 2006 and 2010 Olympics. Carey Price carried the Olympic mantle for Canada in 2014.

At least before they went on this two-week hiatus for the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Blues offered us reason for optimism. Mind you, it’s not a mountain of optimism — more like a hill — but it’s there if you squint and if you want to find it.

That’s not to say they’re poised to go on an improbable run. No, it just means there’s a sign or two they could pull themselves out of the doldrums and perhaps snap out of a recent funk that had them post a 7-9-1 record in their past 17 games after they went 9-5-3 in the first 17 games under coach Jim Montgomery.