St. Louis Blues: NHL Central Weekly Review (Last Week of October)
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues may not be living up to their potential offensively, but they are definitely winning and losing as a team.
Say what you will about the St. Louis Blues ability to score – plenty has been said to be sure – but the team is doing everything as a team. They have won, lost, scored or failed to score as a complete unit.
As fans, we want to see them live up to their potential when they create good scoring chances, but we can only hope the finishing will come. What is good to see is them depend on one another as opposed to looking to one singular player.
The frustrating part of that can be when the entire team has a bad game. It happens in any sport across the board, but the Blues seem to have too many games where the entire team plays poorly.
The thing that makes that dangerous as time goes on is even with someone as talented as Vladimir Tarasenko, the Blues don’t seem to have that presence that will single-handedly pull them out of a funk.
This last homestand was a prime example of that. The Blues didn’t get great goaltending until their weekend game against the Los Angeles Kings.
The lack of scoring combined without the safety net of a shutout performance, or close to it, meant the Blues almost came away with nothing. Instead, due to a true team effort, the Blues managed to get three points out of a possible six.
It was a bit shocking to lay such an egg (not on the scoreboard) against Calgary. Brian Elliott played well, but he was not tested enough by a very lackluster Blues effort by the entire squad en route to a 4-1 loss.
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The Blues then played Detroit and the goals were hard to come by again. That was thanks mainly to Petr Mrazek, who stood on his head through regulation, overtime and several shootout rounds.
St. Louis managed to salvage the home trip with a win against LA. In the team’s Halloween festivities, the fans almost got sent home with a trick as opposed to a treat, but Jake Allen kept the round number on the board and the Blues made their lone goal hold up.
After three weeks of play, St. Louis still manages to be near the top of the division. Even though their play has been inconsistent, only a fantastic start by Minnesota is keeping the Blues from being the top team in the division.
Blues Weekly Stats
Vladimir Tarasenko – 0G 2A 2P
Patrik Berglund – 0G 1A 1P
Jori Lehtera – 0G 1A 1P
Jaden Schwartz – 1G 0A 1P
Kevin Shattenkirk – 2G 0A 2P
Colton Parayko – 0G 1A 1P
Jake Allen – 53 saves/54 shots, .981 save percentage, 0.48 goals against
Carter Hutton – 26 saves/29 shots, .897 save percentage, 3.04 goals against
View from the Midwest Division Recap
Looking Forward
The Blues are going to have four games coming up this week. It’s going to be an even split of away games and home ones.
St. Louis is going to go out on the road for two to start the week and them have a pair of home games over the weekend. It will be a good time for the Blues to work out the kinks.
The Blues have not played overly well at home. So hopefully they will be able to get some good vibes going with their road games and carry that over to their pair of games at home come the weekend.
The games themselves will not be easy. St. Louis will be relying on their defense come Tuesday.
The Blues play the New York Rangers on that day. The Blueshirts currently lead the league in goals scored.
After that, it’s a trip down south to take on the Dallas Stars on Thursday. Dallas is struggling right now, but they are like a powder keg that could go off for four or five goals on any night.
St. Louis ends its week with back-to-back games against Columbus on Saturday and then Colorado on Sunday. Both of those games are hit or miss since both teams are just that.
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Columbus has shown an ability to knock off anyone, but still can’t do it with regular success. The same is true of the Avalanche as they are playing well under their new head coach, but still struggling to find their game each night.
It would be nice for the Blues to come out of this week with six or seven points. With their lack of finishing though, we might need to be happy with four or five.