St. Louis Blues Must Stay Out Of The Box, But How?
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues must stay out of the penalty box to have success against the San Jose Sharks. You’ve heard it over and over and it’s true. How do they accomplish that though?
The St. Louis Blues are one of the most penalized teams in the 2016 playoffs (2nd in the NHL) and regular season (9th). They do take foolish penalties including offensive zone penalties and reaction penalties.
Thus, there have been countless articles on the Blues and their need to stay out of penalty trouble to have success against the San Jose Sharks. Our own keys to victory in this series listed that as a main component and there have been others.
Some discussing Sharks coach, Pete DeBoer’s claim that the officials need to watch the Blues closer, some wondering if he was calling the Blues dirty and some lauding the Blues penalty kill against the vaunted Sharks powerplay.
Slice it up however you want, but the topic of the series has been special teams and the Blues needing to stay out of the box. How to accomplish that though?
Well, it’s easier said than done. Those of you who have played hockey know that. Being a proud member of the goaltender’s union, a little chop to the back of someone’s legs is more likely to go unnoticed than if you do the same out by the red line, so it’s more difficult to say exactly how to keep yourself composed.
Even so, the Blues do need to stay out of the box. Yet, that really has less to do with the Sharks and more to do with the Blues in general.
Sure, the Sharks have a great powerplay and you want those combinations of players on the ice together as little as possible. However, the Blackhawks had a good powerplay and so did the Stars. Not as much was said then.
Now it’s a huge deal. In reality, the Blues need to stay out of the box for their own sake.
Keeping out of penalty trouble keeps your top players on the ice. Everyone was so taken up in the ice time of Vladimir Tarasekno, but a lot of that was due to situations as opposed to some devious plan by Ken Hitchcock to keep his star off the ice.
When the Blues are in the box, players like Tarasenko, Jaden Schwartz, Jori Lehtera and Robby Fabbri aren’t going to be on the ice. Not only does that kill their ice time, but it takes energy away from the guys who are asked to be penalty killers.
The Blues do have the second ranked penalty kill in the playoffs – behind San Jose interestingly enough – but they don’t want to rely on that. Again, it’s not so much because of the Sharks, but simply because it doesn’t matter if you’re playing the best team in the NHL or a team from the minor leagues, it’s just not a good idea to be playing shorthanded often.
In terms of how the Blues accomplish this, they just need to focus on their game. Having the little tug-of-war on the beard with Joe Thornton is OK, but you can’t get caught up in the extra battles after the whistle.
You do have to stick up for your teammates when called for, but it’s often a better idea to just skate away from everything once the whistle blows than get caught up in all that chatter and shoving.
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Penalties during the run of play are almost unavoidable. Until something is called, you really don’t have a good sense of what an officiating crew is going to call or let go on a given night, so you just have to play as smart as you can.
Keep sticks low, try not to get frustrated and take a hack at an opponent if they’ve done the same to you, don’t hit people if you can see the numbers, keep elbows down etc.
All good advice until the game starts and things just happen. The things the Blues can avoid are the ones after the whistle that were mentioned before.
While much is made of the Blues penalty count, a lot of that was accumulated during the Chicago series. Many of those calls were questionable at best, many happened during scrums after the play and the Blues would mysteriously end up with the extra minor and it was just a chippy series overall. The Blackhawks were ousted in the first round and still have the best powerplay percentage in the playoffs as an example.
There’s quite a bit too much made of this topic overall too. DeBoer was quick to point out how many penalties the Blues take while his club is apparently little daisies.
In spite of the gap between teams on the list, the Sharks only averaged less than two minutes of penalty time per game than the Blues did. The Blues also had more fighting majors which accumulates more minutes, while the Sharks had more major penalties, more game misconducts, more boarding calls and more unsportsmanlike conduct penalties too.
The gap is a little over four minutes in the playoffs, but again, much of that came from the Chicago series. The Blues have played more games overall than the Sharks as well.
None of this is making excuses. The Blues actually do need to stay out of the box and avoid San Jose’s powerplay to be successful, but it’s by no means the only thing they need to worry about.
They have to play smart. We’ve said it countless times and plenty of others have said it too. When the Blues are on their game for a full game, there is little many teams can do to beat them. They can beat themselves by not playing up to snuff.
That’s how you do your job best. You can stay out of the box by frustrating the Sharks. You’re not going to out physical them like previous opponents, so it’s best not to focus as much on hitting as was the case against Chicago.
Playing the way the Blues did in the first half of the first period is another way to frustrate them. The Blues were taking advantage of the Sharks and using the open spaces through the middle of the ice when the Sharks were over-eager on the forecheck.
St. Louis can also stay out of the box by not going into their typical second period shell. That’s how you get into trouble.
Nobody really has concrete, clear answer as to why that happens, but the more you try to defend and not attack in answer, the more chances you get onto your heels and that’s when penalties happen.
If the Blues stay on their toes, play smart attacking hockey, they’ll be as good to go as they’re going to be.
Games are going to have penalties. It does happen where there are none called in a game, but it isn’t the norm.
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The Blues do need to stay out of the box, but there’s too much being made about the Sharks. So really, the best way to avoid penalties is to not even worry about it.
You don’t want to make it a focus. You don’t want to change Steve Ott‘s game or David Backes or Troy Brouwer. They have to be smart, but asking them to change is taking away from what the Blues do.
The Blues have already got into the Sharks coach’s head if he’s asking for more powerplays and that’s a victory in and of itself.
Keep playing Blues hockey and this will all take care of itself. Then we’ll be on to the next hot topic.