Missouri is known as the Show-Me State. Right now, the region is showing off its passion for hockey on multiple platforms. At the NHL level, the St. Louis Blues are on a seven-game winning streak as they push for a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This weekend, the PWHL’s Takeover Tour is touching down at Enterprise Center. Then, St. Louis will play host the NCAA Frozen Four on April 10 and 12.

After sitting eight points out of a wild-card spot at the NHL’s break for the 4 Nations Face-Off in mid-February, the Blues have ridden a record of 13-2-2 into the second wild-card spot. With nine games remaining, they’ve got a four-point cushion over the Calgary Flames and are now just two points back of the Minnesota Wild.

That’s impressive work for a team that had been rumored to be exploring a change of scenery for its captain, Brayden Schenn, ahead of the Mar. 7 deadline — and which hadn’t seen immediate returns after snapping up head coach Jim Montgomery when he was fired by the Boston Bruins in late November.

Since Feb. 22, the Blues are first in the NHL in wins (13), points (28), points percentage (.824), goals for (69) and goals per game (4.06), third goals against per game (2.18) and fourth in expected goals share at 5-on-5, per Natural Stat Trick (54.97 percent).

This isn’t the first time that the Blues have seemingly risen from the dead. In 2018-19, they went from last place in the league to their first Stanley Cup championship, a win that amplified longstanding efforts to support and grow the game in a city that has boasted a proud and loyal fanbase since the Blues joined the NHL back in 1967.

When Chris Zimmerman signed on as the Blues’ president and CEO in 2014, his mission was to further develop the region’s the hockey culture and accessibility by building off roots that had already been established.

“The foundation of what’s going on here was the strength of the Blues’ alumni,” he said. “We and the Blues’ alumni take great pride that it’s absolutely one of the strongest alumni groups in the NHL.”

A decade ago, former Blues Keith Tkachuk, Al MacInnis and Jeff Brown were on the ice with the next generation. Their mentorship led to five St. Louis-area players being drafted in the first round of the 2016 NHL draft, led by Keith’s son Matthew Tkachuk at No. 6.

Clayton Keller, who is now the captain of the Utah Hockey Club, also grew up in the area and played on those teams. He was drafted one spot behind Tkachuk in 2016, at No. 7, and currently sits fourth in his draft class with 496 points in 590 career NHL games.

“There’s more people involved as well, but I think all the credit goes to them for everything that they did for us, and we were just super thankful,” he said. “Looking back, I think all of us realize just how special of a coaching staff and team and everything that it was.”

Ottawa Charge defensder Jincy Roese, then known as Jincy Dunne, went from growing up in a hockey-mad family in the St. Louis area to a spot on Team USA at the 2025 Winter Olympics. Early on, she got an important boost from the Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman MacInnis.

“He actually reached out to the men’s coach for me and said, ‘Hey, I think you should give this girl a shot,’” Roese recalled. “I think without that, my career would have been on a totally different trajectory, because those years were so pivotal for my development. He got me a foot in the door to join the boys team.”

When Zimmerman arrived in 2014, one of the first items on his to-do list was getting a plan in place to replace a privately-owned three-sheet ice rink in Chesterfield that was expected to be closing.

In 2016, Zimmerman announced that the Blues had entered into a public-private partnership on a new $83-million facility which is home to four NHL-sized ice rinks and a host of other amenities. The Centene Community Ice Center opened in September of 2019, three months after the Blues’ Cup win. It now serves as the Blues’ practice facility and is home to the Lindenwood University hockey program as well as the St. Louis Blues AAA program and the St. Louis Lady Cyclones.

In 2022, 2024 and 2025, the center also served as the hub for the national championships for the ACHA, which oversees all non-NCAA collegiate hockey across the U.S. It’s an enormous undertaking: the 2025 edition featured 82 teams across three men’s and two women’s divisions. The tournament is now set to return to St. Louis for the next three years.

With better infrastructure comes greater opportunity. USA Hockey’s registration numbers illustrate the growth of the sport in the region. In the 2013-14 season, 7,162 players were registered in the state of Missouri. By 2023-24, that number had spiked to 11,244 — an increase of more than 56 percent during a time when the national growth rate came in at just over eight percent.

The PWHL has become an important touchpoint for the next generation of girls hockey. Roese pays it forward by running a girls camp in St. Louis every summer, and has seen how the progression of the women’s game has helped support her younger sister Joy Dunne and her Ohio State Buckeyes teammate Makenna Webster, who also hails from the region.

In two weeks’ time, the NCAA’s top mens’ players will convene on Enterprise Center as St. Louis plays host to the men’s Frozen Four for the first time since 2007.

This weekend, the PWHL mounts the last stop of the nine-city Takeover Tour, with Roese’s Charge taking on the Boston Fleet and both teams hosting multiple events.

The game takes place Saturday at 1 p.m. CT (2 p.m. ET). The Charge will host an open practice, girls hockey clinic and autograph session on Thursday starting at 5:30 p.m. CT, then the Fleet will host their open practice on Friday starting at 1:15 p.m. CT, with a youth hockey clinic and autograph session to follow.

The St. Louis Blues will continue their push for the playoffs on Thursday in Nashville (8 p.m. ET) and Saturday in Denver against the Colorado Avalanche (4:30 p.m. ET).

A Missouri Republican attempt is underway to restore the “Second Amendment Preservation Act” – despite a federal court ruling an earlier version of the gun law as unconstitutional. The state House has given initial approval to a bill that would ban Missouri law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal gun regulations.

Rep. Bill Hardwick, R-Dixon, is sponsoring House Bill 1175.

“This fix that you had before you is pretty well close the original Second Preservation Act, except instead of delineating certain infringements, it says that our state cops don’t enforce federal law as agents, as commandeered, as subservients of federal agencies, with some exceptions, right? They can always enforce Missouri state law,” said Hardwick.

The state legislature passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act, otherwise known as SAPA, in 2021. The Eight Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis unanimously ruled in 2024 that SAPA violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which says federal law takes precedence over any conflicting state law.

Rep. Lane Roberts, R-Joplin, opposes the bill. He is a former Department of Public Safety Director and Joplin police chief.

“This piece of legislation is not the Second Amendment,” said Roberts. “It’s a piece of legislation that has Second Amendment incorporated by word only. For years, this body has told the world that we support law enforcement…we back the blue. And then we do this.”

Roberts said the legislation creates a new category of lawsuits aimed at law enforcement officers and their agencies.

“It makes our officers second guess everything they do with their federal counterparts,” said Roberts. “It threatens their relationship with their federal counterparts. And it fundamentally vilifies law enforcement by suggesting that we have to tell them that they’re supposed to protect people’s Second Amendment rights, like they don’t know that.”

According to Roberts, law enforcement officers from other states could not serve as an officer in Missouri because it prohibits officers who previously enforced anything that would violate the bill.

“They’ve all done that. They were doing their duty. They were enforcing their law as it existed at the time,” he said. “I’m just not willing to stand quietly by and allow our police officers to become sacrificial lambs. Our cops are the guardians of the Bill of Rights. They are the first line of defense and they take that role seriously.”

Hardwick said he’s not anti-law enforcement.

“I want law enforcement to be resourced, the be supported, to enforce all Missouri laws,” he said. “Is anybody in this room under the impression that a state prosecutor can file a federal charge?”

He said there needs to be boundaries on power.

“There cannot be unlimited police power,” said Hardwick. “There cannot be unlimited federal government power. We have to say that the Constitution constrains that. That does not mean we are in favor of crime. That does not mean we are against law enforcement. That means we are against abuses of power, even against our law enforcement officers.”

Hardwick’s bill would also ban the registering, tracking, and confiscating of guns, something Rep. Michael Burton, D-St. Louis County, is opposed to.

“Statistics of when they banned semi-automatic tactical-style assault rifles, we saw a drop in the number of dead people,” said Burton.

“Just please think for a moment how incredibly absurd that is, that because there’s a different accoutrement on a rifle, it’s suddenly going to cause a different amount of deaths,” said Hardwick.

“Then why don’t we send our military folks into battle with the wooden rifles,” Burton fired back.

One more state House vote of support would send the bill to the Senate for more eyes to look over the legislation.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (First Alert 4) – Missouri schools could be required to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom if one lawmaker gets his way.

High school student Calvino Hammerman used to attend a Jewish private school. Now at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis County, the sophomore appreciates all the diversity of his peers. But as a practicing Jew, Hammerman said he understands what it’s like to have someone else’s religion forced on you.

That’s why Hammerman opposes a bill that would require all public and charter schools in Missouri to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

“My Hindu friends do not believe in this, but who is the government to tell them that that is wrong,” Hammerman said in a Senate Education Committee hearing.

A bill sponsored by Cape Girardeau-area Republican Sen. Jamie Burger would require all Missouri public and charter schools to display the Ten Commandments in the lobby and in all classrooms on a poster no smaller than 11 by 14 inches. If this passes, it would go into effect Jan. 1, 2026. There is no plan to allocate money to schools to pay for the posters, but Burger said he is confident there will be donors willing to fund the posters for schools.

“I honestly believe that when prayer went out of schools, and religion was removed from schools, that guns came in and violence came in,” Burger said.

In a public hearing of the Senate Education Committee Tuesday morning, far more Missourians stepped up to oppose the bill than support. The committee ran out of time to hear testimony from all of those gathered to oppose the bill, but many of those who did speak were religious clergy members who said it would violate Americans’ religious freedoms.

“As you have already noted, there is a Ten Commandment monument just outside this building, and that has not made the members of this body follow all of those commandments,” said Brian Kaylor with the Christian nonprofit Word & Way.

Bills like this are popping up across the country, at least a dozen other states are considering or have passed similar requirements. Louisiana was the first state to pass this law, but it was blocked by a federal judge. The case could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Democratic Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern said the legislature shouldn’t act on this bill until the court makes a decision.

“Placing these in a public school classroom is a very frustrating use of our time and what I see as our tax dollars moving forward as we litigate these things,” Nurrenbern said.

While those opposed say this bill would violate religious freedoms, Republican lawmakers like Sen. Rick Brattin argue the complete opposite.

“We just need to be willing to plant that flag that God, and the God of the Ten Commandments, is who gave us this amazing nation and we need to be able to reflect and look at that,” Brattin said.

The bill needs approval from the Senate Education committee to move forward, the committee could vote as soon as next week.

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