The Blues have had an incredible 2018-2019 hockey season. Why you ask? Laura Branigan, that’s why. If you are a blues fan, then you already know about the song “Gloria,” but you probably don’t know about how it all started and like all good stories, this one started in a bar.
It started when five Blues players were hanging out in a bar in Philadelphia watching the Chicago Bears play against the Philadelphia Eagles. All night the bar would play Laura Branigan’s, “Gloria” and the Blues players extremely liked it. They decided that this was the song that they would play after they would win a game to celebrate. A lot of people said that this song brought good luck to the team as they went on a 35-10 win/loss record at the start of the 2019 year. You have to remember that the Blues were in dead last at the start of the year, so this win/loss record was extremely impressive especially coming from a team like them.
The Blues story from the 2018-2019 season seems like it came right out of a movie. There has been no team in NHL history to go from last place to the Stanley Cup finals, let alone, win the Stanley Cup. The Blues have waited 52 years to get this great accomplishment and they’ve waited 49 years to get back to the Stanley Cup Finals. This entire season was historical not only for the Blues but for the NHL too. Ryan O’Reilly was the second person in NHL history to win both the Frank Selke and Conn Smythe trophy and the Blues won their first Finals game against the Boston Bruins, along with the Stanley Cup of course.
I guess you could say that “Gloria” played a really big role in the Blues success and I would totally agree. People were playing this song all over the place. They were playing it on television and even radio shows would do 24 hours of just “Gloria”. Ever since the Blues have started to play this song, there have been millions of downloads off of Spotify and iTunes from Blues fanatics. Unfortunately in the new season coming up the Blues have decided to retire the song with the incredible post season that they had. The home opener for the 2019-2020 season is going to be and will be the very last time that Enterprise Center plays the amazing 80’s styled song that we all know and love.
-Joey Pecher
Ms. Harner's EN100 Blog 