St. Louis Blues Morning Links: Senators Veto The Blues
By Todd Panula
Good morning Blues fans! The St. Louis Blues failed to defeat the Ottawa Senators again. The team did not play a terrible game, but enough of the really bad Blues showed up to make it a sour result.
The Force was not with the St. Louis Blues last night. They fell to the Ottawa Senators for the seventh straight calendar year. The last time the Blues beat Ottawa in St. Louis was 2010.
Ottawa embraced the Dark Side of the Force on Star Wars night at the Scttrade Center. It was more than enough to knock off the St. Louis Blues as their shooting ability was worse than any stormtrooper we have seen.
That coupled with the dominant pressure from the Senators was more than enough for Ottawa to come out with a victory like Palpatine over the Jedi in the prequel trilogy.
Ok, I’ll try to calm down with the Star Wars references. It is just so much fun to combine two of my favorite things.
Focusing on the game itself, the Blues tested my recent point that we would be alright with losses as long as the Blues were playing hard. That’s pretty much what we got last night as the Blues played OK offensively, but made way too many mistakes to expect to come out on top.
The Blues own poor defensive play coupled with some god-awful turnovers were just too much to overcome. The fact that the officials saw fit to not blow the whistle on a clearly dead play did not help matters either, but that can’t be fully blamed for the outcome.
St. Louis just didn’t get enough from the key areas they had gotten spectacular play from the last two games. Carter the Hutton did not help the team’s case either with some goals that were not top draw getting past him.
Blues fans thought they had found their savior, but Hutton reverted to backup form. Unfortunately, the backup is the most popular man in the arena until they get exposed.
The game cannot be laid at the feet of one man though, especially Hutton. He made enough saves to keep the Blues in the game until the last period. Once the Blues needed to pull the goaltender, they just did not have the tenacity to keep the score within reach.
Losing battles on the boards, poor puck management, turnovers in terrible spots and just overall weakness in key areas were the main reasons the Blues lost. Not getting the goaltender to bail them out was merely a side issue.
If you want to pick out one play, the Blues inability to exit the zone on the Senators’ go-ahead goal was the key play. Jaden Schwartz needed to just dump it out instead of continually trying to sneak a weak puck by the forechecker.
The Blues need to clean things up quickly or the loss column will have another streak with it. The Blues are going up against one of the league’s hottest teams on Thursday.
It took an eight goal performance by Pittsburgh to knock off Washington after a nine game streak for the Caps. Even at their best I’m not sure the Blues could put up that many.
So, they need to clean up the defending and get back to communicating. It has to be a five man effort every shift or the Blues will get blown up like Alderaan.
Here are your St. Louis Blues Morning Links to get your day started off right.
The St. Louis Blues lost another player to a waiver claim. It sucks to lose any player for nothing, but having a divisional rival pick up Brad Hunt, whether for spite or actual hockey reasons really stings. (Arch Authority)
The St. Louis Blues had set up an impenetrable wall to make Scottrade Center a fortress earlier in the season. Now, after losing to Ottawa and several others, the Blues home ice is nothing more than a ruin of former glory as everything that had gone right is now going the other way. (Post-Dispatch)
Next: Trade Targets: Matt Duchene
The scoreline might have been closer than the Blues but at least St. Louis was not the only team to throw a result away. Minnesota took a rare punch to the jaw by the New Jersey Devils. So, at least the Blues technically kept pace. (NHL)
The Colorado Avalanche have plenty of players the Blues and other teams should and are interested in. Gabriel Landeskog may not be on that list as he does not want to go anywhere. (ESPN)
Have a great day Blues fans!