Blues’ Jake Neighbours is putting in the work this summer to prove last season was no fluke
By Jeremy Rutherford
Earlier this summer, a customer walked into the St. Louis Blues’ team apparel store looking for a Jake Neighbours jersey.
They were out of them, but the staff came through.
An employee searched several cabinets before finding the individual letters “N-E-I-G-H-B-O-U-R-S,” as well as “63.” In a matter of minutes, the 22-year-old forward’s last name and number were heat-pressed onto the back of a Blues uniform.
“That’s pretty cool,” Neighbours said this week from his home in western Canada. “I try not to think about that stuff too much, but as a player, the support from the fan base means a lot. I’ve said it before: I’m just someone who tries to work hard and play the right way, and I think the fans appreciate that.”
Boy, do they.
When The Athletic conducted a fan survey in January, asking the question, “Which young player currently on the Blues roster are you most excited about?” he won with 71.1 percent of the vote.
It’s not hard to understand why.
Neighbours started the season on the fourth line and ended on the top line. He scored 27 goals, and 20 came from the high-danger zone in front of the net. He finished the year with 138 hits, which ranked fourth on the team.
With him missing the last five games of the regular season with an upper-body injury, there wasn’t an opportunity to ask about his breakout season, and with the Blues missing the playoffs, there wasn’t much the team-centric first-round pick from 2020 would have said anyway.
So 90 days removed from the club’s locker cleanout day in April, Neighbours was asked this week to reflect on 2023-24.
“I think it was a great year,” he said. “I was very happy with it, and I surprised myself a little bit, and a lot of other people. I just think personally, I was put in a really good position. I got moved up in the lineup and got a chance to play with some really good players and play on the power play. So I was a benefactor of a lot of good players around me, and just tried to be in the right spots and work hard, and I think it worked hard.”
The turning point for Neighbours, he believes, came in late November.
The Blues were on their Dad’s trip, and he scored twice in a 4-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Nov. 26. They returned to St. Louis, and with his dad Ed sticking around, he netted two more goals in a 6-4 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Nov. 30.
“It was an overwhelming week, and I gained a lot of belief in myself that I can play in this league,” Neighbours said. “My dad was there to see it, and he got on TV, so he was pretty pumped. From that point on, I don’t think I ever looked back.”
Now that NHL coaches know the name on the back of Neighbours’ jersey, it will get harder. However, he did enough that many fans were wondering this summer if the Blues would be wise to sign him to a long-term contract extension.
In 2020, the Blues signed Neighbours to a three-year, entry-level contract, but with the team returning him to junior hockey in 2020-21 and ’21-22, the deal “slid” until he officially played his first season in the NHL in ’22-23.
That means Neighbours will be playing out the final year of his entry-level deal next season for a salary of $835,834, after which he’ll become a restricted free agent. He was eligible to sign an extension on July 1, but general manager Doug Armstrong acknowledged recently that there have been no discussions, and according to him, really no need for talks.
“He’s been a pro, a regular pro, for one year,” Armstrong said. “I don’t think that there’s any necessity to jump the shark.”
Both sides can get bit in these situations — the Blues if they sign Neighbours after a productive season and he never duplicates that performance again, and Neighbours if he agrees to a deal and then outplays it.
Quinton Byfield was the No. 2 pick by the Los Angeles Kings in Neighbours’ draft year, and with his three-year, entry-level deal sliding one season, he was an RFA this summer. Recently, he signed a five-year, $31.25 million extension ($6.25 million annual average value) with the Kings.
Byfield was a higher pick who put up more points than Neighbours last season (55-38). But if Neighbours’ scoring numbers next season are similar to his output in ’23-24, he’ll be in line for a sizable raise.
“At the end of the day, I’m a hockey player and my job is to play hockey,” Neighbours said. “I’m not worried about that side of things. When the time comes to do that, we’ll deal with that.”
Neighbours now knows that he can be more than an “identity player” in the NHL, which former Blues coach Craig Berube labeled him at the start of last season before moving him up the lineup.
“That’s your goal, you want to showcase yourself when you get an opportunity, show that you can produce offense and play in that role,” he said. “For me, I don’t just go to the hard areas. I think I’m also someone who can make plays, see the ice well and is easy to play with.”
That combination of skill and grit has led people to compare Neighbours with former Blues forwards T.J. Oshie and Alexander Steen, who’s now the team’s GM-in-waiting.
“It’s surreal to be compared to guys you watch growing up and guys that have had a lot of success at this level,” he said. “It’s a good comment, but at the same time, I’m still young, and I haven’t done really anything in my career. I had one good year, and that’s not what shapes a career. To be compared to those guys, you’ve got to do something similar to what they did, and I haven’t done that yet.”
That’s another characteristic — Neighbours’ maturity — that draws fellow pros to him. They may not know where it came from, but they can sense it, and as a result, they support him.
“I’ve had countless conversations with countless guys,” he said. “They come up and say, ‘You’re doing a good job! Keep going!’”
Neighbours went back to Alberta this summer, and he’s been working on his skating, his strength and his shot. Even in just three seasons, he said the league is getting faster every year. Yes, he scored a lot of high-danger last season, but as a marked man now, he’ll need some muscle to keep that up. And if goals are harder to come by in front of the net in the future, he’ll need to be able to score from distance to keep opponents honest.
“The offseason is about getting better at parts of the game that you don’t have time to work on during an 82-game season,” Neighbours said. “So I’ve just been in the gym a lot, on the ice a lot, trying to get stronger and improve my game. I think watching the playoffs, how competitive the hockey is, and seeing how fun it looked, the atmosphere, it was hard to watch knowing you could’ve been a part of it. It was a motivating factor for me.”
He’s been paying attention to the Blues’ offseason headlines, and likes that Drew Bannister is returning as head coach after leading the club to a 30-19-5 record as the interim last season.
“It’s going to be good,” Neighbours said. “He did a good job when he came in last year, and it’s just nice to come into camp with a familiar face. We know what Banny is all about and how he runs a team, so we’re comfortable with that.”
He also likes the roster additions, including forwards Mathieu Joseph, Radek Faksa, Alexandre Texier and defensemen Ryan Suter and Pierre-Olivier Joseph.
“Suter, a good veteran, and Mathieu Joseph, who was on some very good Tampa Bay teams,” Neighbours said. “We have a lot of speed up and down our lineup, and a lot of guys that can play in a lot of different positions. There’s a lot of new faces, so we’ll have to get together in camp and get to know each other. But yeah, it’s a good squad. I like the look of it, and I like the people they brought in.”
Neighbours is familiar with one of the new faces. He played with P.O. Joseph with Team Canada at the World Championships.
“I love him,” he said. “He’s an awesome guy, super funny, and always in high spirits. He’s a great player, uses his stick very well and skates well, which helps with defending. He thinks the game well, too. We got along very well on that team, and I think Blues fans should be excited.”
There are nearly two months left before training camp begins, but Blues fans are already getting their jerseys stitched up, and evidently a lot of them with Neighbours’ No. 63. He’s a player who’s been in the league long enough that he wants to win now, but also young enough that he’s part of a future that will soon include prospects Jimmy Snuggerud, Dalibor Dvorsky and others.
“You want to have a chance to compete in the postseason, and that’s up to us as players to put ourselves in good position,” Neighbours said. “It’s also very exciting when you have young guys coming up in the system. I think everyone is looking forward for them to make their debuts.
“But as of right now, I’m just preparing to come in and have a really good camp and hopefully a really good start to the season. I’m just motivated to come in and do it again — and hopefully more.”