St. Louis Blues: The Fourth Day Of Bluesmas
By Todd Panula
Four days in and our comparison of the St. Louis Blues and the 12 Days of Christmas is getting harder. Perhaps fitting since the season gets harder as your press on.
On the Fourth Day of Bluesmas, the blue note gave to me, four overtime losses. The St. Louis Blues are 31 games into the 2016-17 season as of writing this and they are already halfway to their total of overtime losses from last season.
There is not great importance to those numbers. You win, you lose or sometimes it takes a little longer for those results to get settled.
That is the case when games go to overtime. The problem for St. Louis is not whether they got two points or one.
The problem for the Blues is energy expenditure. Especially with the Winter Classic approaching.
The Winter Classic is actually to blame for the issue two fold. First, the Blues have a cramped schedule.
St. Louis gets the most days off during the Christmas break, which means the league had to cram the normal amount of games into a more protracted time frame. That means less rest, less practice time and more fatigue, both mentally and physically.
Second is the game itself. You want to put your best foot forward in a nationally televised showcase game.
The Blues and Blackhawks will be the only game in town, so to speak. Therefore, as a player or a fan, you want your team to be on its best. Fresh, vibrant and ready to take on the world.
That becomes harder when you’re expending unnecessary energy by going to overtime when you don’t need to. Four is simply the number of games the Blues have lost going to an extra period.
St. Louis has played in eight games that either went to overtime or ended in a shootout. In the grand scheme, winning half the games that had to go that far isn’t terrible.
It is a lot of energy expended, especially with the awful three-on-three format the league now uses. On top of that, it’s the mental drain.
It’s not just a mental tax to play in those games, but the way they come about has to take a toll. The Blues made quite a habit of giving up leads to get to overtime.
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The split of wins and losses is pretty even in those as well. Nevertheless, it is not an admirable trait to continually lose leads when the scramble is on and the opponent’s net is empty.
The Blues always seem to be on the bad end of those games. I’m not talking wins and losses, but the win over Montreal seems to be the more rare case of the Blues actually coming back to force overtime.
More often than not, the Blues held the lead at some point in the game. Often it is well into the third period and then fans are treated to those gutting last minute/second goals.
It happens. Nobody is saying otherwise really. It just seems to happen to our hockey team a bit too much.
As the season wears on, those are the moments where you wonder how much was taken out of the tank earlier in the year. There is no way to say “well, if they had just won in regulation on November 28, we would have won the Cup.” That is just silly.
You can say that a team that learns to put games away instead of either having to come back or allowing teams to come back is in a better position. St. Louis is not currently in that position.
None of this is meant to bash the team. It’s just to point out the unnecessary extra energy the team must spend when good teams find a way to finish things off.
Of the teams that would be in the playoffs if they started today, only Edmonton and Anaheim have more overtime losses. The other thing those three have in common? They allow a lot of goals.
Next: The Third Day of Bluesmas
So, it comes full circle. The Blues need a better defensive effort to avoid these extra periods.
It sounds foolish, but a hard 60 minutes will take less of a toll in the long run than a weaker 65-70 minutes.