As a child, Michael Brunt would cozy up to his family’s transistor radio at night to catch broadcasts of St. Louis Cardinal baseball games. The Missouri station’s (KMOX) radio signal was strong enough back then to convert a number of Mississippians to Cardinals fans.
Every now and then while listening to that radio, a young Brunt would happen upon St. Louis Blues hockey games, and the sport quickly captivated him. When Brunt left Kosciusko for Ole Miss in the early 1970s, little did he know he would play a role in the hockey franchise he closely followed as a youngster.
On June 13, just after the St. Louis Blues’ 4-1 series-clinching win in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, Brunt stood on the ice at Boston’s TD Garden and hoisted the coveted silver Stanley Cup. The Kosciusko native earned that right because has served as the St. Louis Blues’ team surgeon since 1974.
“The Blues played the perfect road game and we won, and it was incredible,” Brunt, 65, said of the historic win. “We were out on the ice after the game, and after all of the players and some of the key alums and ownership and training staff got the Cup, then it was the doctors’ turn. There were four of us there, and we each got to raise the Cup and get a celebratory picture. It was absolutely phenomenal. It was really incredible.”
Brunt graduated from Kosciusko High School in 1972 before attending the University of Mississippi. Upon graduation in 1976 from Ole Miss, Brunt headed to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University for medical school. Following medical school, he matched with the then-Barnes Hospital, affiliated with the Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, for his general surgery residency.
Upon completion of his training, Brunt remained on the school staff as faculty. The Blues head team physician was an orthopedic surgeon at the school.
“In 1994, he asked me to be the general surgeon for the team,” Brunt recalled. “So this is my 26th season with the Blues. We have a large medical staff – there’s three orthopedic surgeons, there’s an internist, a dentist, a plastic surgeon and I’m the general surgeon for the team. I cover about half of the home games every year… I’ve been a member of the NHL team physicians’ society for many, many years, and even serve on their executive committee.”
Brunt, a professor of surgery and section chief of minimally invasive surgery at Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, was originally scheduled to fly to Spain two days before Game 7. However, after Boston forced the decisive contest, he tossed those plans aside. With the franchise’s first-ever Stanley Cup championship swinging in the balance, Brunt wasn’t going take his chances with being excluded from history.
“I wasn’t going to miss it,” Brunt said. “I was supposed to fly to Spain on Tuesday. Instead, I flew to Boston on Wednesday.”
The Blues were an expansion team in 1967, and in each of the first three seasons played for the Stanley Cup finals. This season marked the first time the team made it back to the title series. In early January, St. Louis scored the fewest amount of points of any team in the NHL. As the year progressed, so did the team. Brunt said the determination and focus of this year’s team was unrivaled. By the playoffs, Blues magic captivated the city.
“For the away games, the Enterprise Center, where the Blues play at home, sold out,” Brunt said. “There were over 18,000 people in the Enterprise Center watching the game on the game on video boards. For Game 7, the Enterprise Center sold out in 10 minutes, and they opened up Busch Stadium, and there were almost 30,000 people watching the game in Busch Stadium even though it was raining. There were close to 50,000 people downtown watching the game at one of those two stadiums. It was unbelievable.”
Brunt, who said he’s watched a number of milestone sporting events in person over the years, said witnessing the Blues make history outranks them all.
“Winning the Cup, there’s just absolutely nothing to compare,” he said. “It is, many people say this and I certainly believe it, the most difficult championship to win of all the major sports – NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball. Because it’s four rounds of a best of 7. It goes over two months, and it’s fast-paced, hard-hitting, physical sport. It just wears the guys down. But these are some of the greatest athletes in the world.”
Due to his affiliation with Blues, Brunt is also involved with a sports hernia practice, where he works with athletes from the United States and Canada. The accumulation of experiences as a medical professional, he said, is unbelievable.
“It’s been an incredible experience just to be a part of the team and the organization,” Brunt said. “It’s something I could have never dreamt of when I was growing up in Mississippi, as much as a sports fan as I was, that I would actually be a physician for professional sports teams – I do some consulting for the Cardinals and the Rams, when they were here. But winning the Stanley Cup was pure elation. It was indescribable.”
Brunt still visits Kosciusko a few times a year. And despite no longer being a resident, he still holds a special affinity for his hometown. His mother, Pauline Brunt, still resides in his childhood home. He remembers his days playing trumpet and as a drum major in the Kosciusko ban, and credits his childhood town for much of the success he’s experienced over the years.
“No. 1 about Kosciusko is it’s a community,” Brunt said. “There were just so many people who encouraged and supported me growing up in high school, in the church and in the music program. The band was a big part of my life. The high school band and its music, that was one area where we felt like we could go out and compete against anybody in the state – and we did. That really carried me well going forward at Ole Miss and beyond. When you’re able to do something as a group and a team, and to be involved in that and to have that sense of accomplishment, that helped set me on the path forward to do well in college and to get into a great medical school, and to have a great career as a professor of surgery at one of the great medical schools in the country. Without that kind of background and experience and confidence building, I think it’s really difficult to do that kind of thing. That’s one of the things that really unique about that community.”
