St. Louis Blues Failure To Convert Costing Them Points
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues fell in a shootout to the Detroit Red Wings. The loss isn’t worrying as much as the team’s inability to convert the quality chances they earn for themselves.
Well, one thing is for sure. The St. Louis Blues did not fail to show up against the Detroit Red Wings the way they did against the Calgary Flames.
That said, the loss is just as frustrating even though the Blues squeaked a point out of it. We are still early in the season and the Blues are still looking OK at 4-2-2 after the Detroit matchup.
What is discouraging is the team’s ability to create and then not finish it off. The game against the Red Wings was a perfect example.
You have to give Petr Mrazek a lot of credit. He set the tone early with some big stops against some of the Blues’ big name scorers.
Even so, the Blues put 60 pucks toward net. They put 32 of those shots on goal.
I could go on about how only hitting the net on a smidge above 50% isn’t good enough either, but the focus should be on converting. The Blues are clearly not going to win when they do not score.
Through eight games, the Blues have two regulation losses and two losses in OT/shootout. The one thing in common with all those games is St. Louis only scored one goal in regulation.
That just is not going to cut it. I don’t care which side of the fence you fall on regarding Jake Allen or the goaltending situation the last few years, this team isn’t built to win 1-0 games.
Even Ken Hitchcock is beginning to get a little frustrated by the team’s lack of scoring in key situations.
“Can’t just keep living on scoring chances as work,” said Hitchcock in his postgame press conference. “You gotta finish at the end of the day…I think we have to dig a little bit deeper.”
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It is just a worrying habit right now. The Blues outworked the Vancouver Canucks and lost in overtime.
They still looked good against Edmonton and lost. They laid an egg against Calgary by not even creating much and then had tons of chances against Detroit and could not put them in the back of the net.
Again, you can put the Detroit game in a slightly different category since Mrazek was standing on his head. Still, the Blues have enough talent that they should be converting.
Even in the 3-on-3 overtime, the Blues had so many chances to end it in the Detroit game. The Blues had a 2-on-1 and a breakaway on consecutive possessions and came up with nothing.
If you intend on being in the top three of the division, let alone in first place, you need to be able to put those chances away. Right now, the Blues are not and now they have fallen out of the top divisional spot.
It’s way to early to concern ourselves with the division race, especially since the Blues are still in an enviable spot. Nevertheless, these are the points that can haunt you at the end of a season.
Thankfully, the Blues don’t look like a team incapable of scoring. That was a big worry coming into the year.
For now, they simply aren’t scoring. Like their baseball neighbors, it is feast or famine right now.
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The Blues better start finishing off these chances though. For one game it’s fine to say guys like Jaden Schwartz or Vladimir Tarasenko don’t miss very often or that Jori Lehtera was unlucky.
That’s OK for one game. It’s becoming a bit more of a trend and they need to end it.