Blues President John Davidson met with the media on Thursday, which was locker clean-out day for the players.

Here’s Part 1 of the interview with Davidson, who talked about a wide range of topics including the Vancouver series, Barret Jackman’s knee injury, the team’s offseason priorities and much more.

Q: What is the feeling 48 hours after your playoff series with Vancouver wrapped up?

JD: “I don’t know . . . there’s been a lot accomplished. There’s a long way to go. For the players, the season ends. They deserve a rest, what they’ve been through all year. For us, we just keep going. We’ll have a couple of weeks of intense meetings with coaching staff, with Peoria, with pro scouts and then we move on from their to the draft. The cycle keeps going. I think that we’re in a good place . . . the experience factor of what you want your players to go through, some of it happened, which is good. Whether the experience was a great experience, or not such a great experience, it’s a good experience. I remember playing my first-ever playoff series with the Blues against Pittsburgh, I wasn’t real good. But I could draw on that. I got traded the next year to New York and I enjoyed playing in the playoffs. You can always draw on that first time through, what to expect. There’s a lot of good things that happened.”

Q: Obviously there’s some disappointment, but have you allowed yourself to say, “We went from 15th to 6th and made the playoffs?”

JD: “Yeah, that’s good. It was even harder than I thought it was going to be to get in because there’s so many good teams in this conference. And these teams are going to be even better next year. It’s going to be even harder to get in next year. That’s how good this conference is. What (the team) did was quite remarkable, led by the coaching staff that never let anybody off the hook . . . led by players, who all cared. We made sure at the trade deadline that we gave them a chance because they earned it. The veteran leadership was real good. I really enjoyed watching those guys work with the young players. The young players were very respectful to the coaching staff and the veteran players. Goaltending with Chris (Mason) was the anchor. The throwback players like Walt (Tkachuk) and Barret Jackman playing through injury and never complaining. Barret Jackman was pretty beat up by the end of it and never complained once . . . never missed a shift hardly, let alone a game. There’s some talk that he was going to do an MRI on his knee and he didn’t want to because he didn’t want to see how serious it was. He’s a guy that should have played in the 70s.”

Q: Do you know what’s wrong with Jackman’s knee?

JD: “No, we’re going through that process. I think he’ll be OK, but that whole process happens now, when you have the physicals and the MRIs, and then you have appointments to see what you’re going to do . . . whether you just go and rehab or you go and have surgeries. We don’t know who’s going to do what.”

Q: Was Patrik Berglund hurt?

JD: “Umm, I don’t think so. Probably worn a little bit. This is a young man who’s 20 years old and has never played in North America before. Whenever you take a European player of that age, and bring them over, it’s going to be a process. Patrik Berglund stepped right out of the Swedish Elite League, played there only one year. He came over here and played in the NHL for a full year. Had some remarkably good times. Sometimes he wasn’t as good, but that’s all about hitting the wall and playing against men that are bigger and stronger, playing more games than you’re used to, practicing harder than you’re used to, the whole thing. He’s going to be a better player for it.”

Q: Do the playoffs expose areas that you need to improve?

JD: “You can look at that a couple of ways. I think the only way that we got exposed was our power play didn’t score. Other than that, we were pretty good. You can disagree, but I look at that series . . . did we get any breaks? In my opinion, and Vancouver has said it publicly, how hard it was for a four-game series. They needed the break. In my opinion, that series could have been 2-2 in the blink of an eye. That second game, we hit four goal posts and missed three open nets. The game the other night, we had a goal disallowed, but that’s part of hockey . . . we also had I don’t know how many shots. We played well enough to be 2-2 in my opinion for a team that had that many players who had never been in a playoff series. The power play hurt us, which is rather evident. When we look forward with Paul (Kariya) here next year, and Erik Johnson here next year, those are things that make power plays better. We were eighth in the league all year (on the power play). But confidence is interesting in the playoffs. If we score on that 5-on-3 in Vancouver, early in the first period in Game 1, who knows what our power play would have done. But we didn’t and everybody got uptight. They sensed that we were nervous on our power play, and they were a very aggressive penalty-kill team because they knew there was some trepidation there.”

Q: Assuming your defense is completely healthy, do you need to add another offensive-minded defenseman?

JD: “I don’t think so. All options are open . . . it’s too early for me to say we’re going to add this or add that. I think all options are open. That’s the only way you do your business. But we’re an organization that’s tried very hard to build from within. With Erik (Johnson) missing a full year of experience, that’s tough but he’s going to have to have a very good summer, which I think he will . . . and have a good camp, which I think he will. That’s going to help us. If (Alex) Pietrangelo is good enough to play here, that’s going to help us. (Carlo) Colaiacovo is coming to a place next season where he’s wanted and he knows what his position is going to be on the team; that’s going to be great. It’s up to him this work summer to be better than he even was. You need guys with the big shot from the point like Erik does . . . guys that have passing skills like Carlo has and Petro has and like Erik certainly has. That’s going to make a big difference to our team.”

Part 2 of the Davidson Q&A will be posted later today, followed by interviews with 4-5 Blues players.

JR