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After a long sports spring and summer in downtown ӣ����Ƶ, those positive vibes certainly are welcomed. Hey, the Blues will take a 12-game regular-season home winning streak into Thursday night’s opener at Enterprise Center — 15 consecutive games if you include the three playoff wins.

There’s undoubtedly some residue lingering from the historic run last winter and a return to the playoffs following a two-year hiatus, but it’s not something the Blues are willing to hang their hats on going into this season.

The fact that the Blues have put that firmly behind them may be one of the most encouraging things I’ve taken from this preseason. From Day 1, the Blues realized they’re starting over.

“There’s some confidence, for sure,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “But at the end of the day, we didn’t accomplish anything last year. So we don’t have to be arrogant about anything. We know we can be a good team, but we have a lot of work to do. That’s the best way we have to look at it. We have to get better. We have to have a good camp here and come out with a good start this year. That’s going to be important for us.

“Worry about those two things here first. I think we have a lot of guys that are going to make a step in the right direction, but at the same time, the league is humbling. We have a very good division. Anyone can beat anyone. There’s a lot of good teams we’ll be playing hard games against.”

It’s hard to count on carrying things over with new players. Of the 23 players on the opening day roster announced Monday afternoon, forwards Pius Suter and Nick Bjugstad and defenseman Logan Mailloux joined the organization for the first time this offseason.

Meanwhile, forwards Jimmy Snuggerud (college) and Oskar Sundqvist (injured/non-roster) and defensemen Cam Fowler (Anaheim) and Tyler Tucker (AHL) were not on the roster to at the start of last season.

Before camp started, president of hockey operations Doug Armstrong spoke to the idea of guarding against that inclination to think things you saw at the end of last season will naturally carryover.

“We have to build our own team again,” Armstrong said. “We have to start with that foundation. Now, there’s a lot of things the players can remember and learn from, from last year. But to think that they can just replicated by showing up — hockey doesn’t work that way. The NHL doesn’t work that way.”

One thing Schenn stressed at the beginning of camp was the need to get off to a good start. That’s been an underlying theme for head coach Jim Montgomery from the start of his first camp as head coach of the Blues.

The fact of the matter is the Blues needed a bit of magic just to get into the postseason last year. That’s not something they can rely on again this year.

They rode a franchise-record 12-game win streak from March 15 through April 5 to propel them into the postseason. From Feb. 22 through the end of the season, they tied for the most wins (19) in the NHL.

They became only the 10th team in NHL history to make the playoffs after having been eight points or more out of a playoff spot with 26 games remaining.

In case you forgot, even with all of that, they finished the regular season with the same number of points as Calgary — a club left on the outside looking in when the playoffs started.

When Montgomery harped on special teams play early in camp, he pointed to the importance of the power play and penalty kill in teams getting a good start to the season.

Montgomery also seemingly mentioned the word “pace” every time he spoke to reporters after a practice session. The players clearly heard it a lot as well.

“Camp is all about getting back up to game speed,” winger Dylan Holloway said. “The more pace you play with, obviously, the harder it is to play against. I think he’s just instilling that in us early, to play with pace, be driving that back post, not getting complacent on the forecheck or backcheck. You’ve got to get up and down the ice quick. Ultimately, that’s what good teams do.”

Playing with a speed clearly benefited the Blues last season, particularly with defensemen capable of playing a key part of their offense. Defensemen scored 46 goals for the Blues last season, third-most in the NHL and the fourth-highest percentage of their team’s goals (18.4%) in the NHL.

Robert Thomas characterized playing fast as “the way we get the most out of our players” following the final home preseason game.

But there’s even a little more to it than that for Montgomery. It’s something Montgomery paid attention to constantly and noted daily, in relation to the overall team as well as from one line to the next or one combination to the next.

“I think you’ve got to play with pace because that’s how you develop next-play speed, which is basically transitional speed,” Montgomery said. “This game is a fluid game. It goes offense to defense. If you have drills that have those transitions naturally in it and then the players are executing and practicing with that kind of pace with hard checking against you, that prepares you.”

Then he added another important sentence.

“What I’ve seen is it leads to a good start to the year,” Montgomery said.

There it is again. The idea of getting off to a good start.

The Blues have clearly flipped the page on last season. Not because they’ve taken the miraculous run for granted but because they’re focused on getting off to a fast start and not needing a charmed run to save them late in the season again.