St. Louis Blues Colton Parayko Must Unleash The Beast

The St. Louis Blues have one of the league’s best, young players in Colton Parayko. He has plenty of room to grow, but there is one area that the team would benefit the most from his improvement.

The St. Louis Blues have a heck of a player in Colton Parayko. They know this and know they are likely going to have to give him a sizable contract, either now or in the not-too-distant future.

In two seasons, Parayko has scored 68 points. That’s an average of 34 per season, which is a pretty good couple years, let alone for a player coming straight out of college.

Sometimes that gets forgotten. Parayko spent no time in major-junior hockey like many of the big name prospects. He spent almost no time in the minors.

He played 17 games with the Chicago Wolves once his college season was over in 2014-15. Other than that, it was pretty much straight to the Blues and the NHL.

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He has not disappointed either in his brief time. Both he and Joel Edmundson gave the team no other choice but to put them in their defensive rotation in 2015-16.

Normally when that happens, you might be a playoff hopeful or a team in transition. The Blues were a Stanley Cup favorite of some and a contender to most in that season.

Both players, Parayko especially, never gave the team any reason to take him out. If anything, he gave them reason to increase his playing time.

In two years Parayko has shown he could be one of the best defensemen in the league once he reaches his full potential. Not only is he a huge body, strong player and decent positional player but he can skate.

We’re not talking about he can skate for a big man. Parayko has sneaky speed, to the degree that you could see him playing forward in a pinch. His stick handling gets him out of jams better than many of the Blues current forwards.

All of that said, there are still things he must improve on if he is to be the player we all want and he needs to be. He needs to unleash the inner beast.

There is a good chance that never happens in the manner we hope. Parayko is such a mild-mannered, polite young man that we might never see a nasty, mean streak on the ice.

It would be great to see. He is such a physical force right now that if he ever developed a mean streak, he would have half the league needing to change their pants.  Even with room to be even tougher, he already has 182 hits to his credit in two years.

What he can improve on and needs to is having the confidence in his shot. 13 goals over two years is not great, but even if that ends up being his scoring average, he can really improve on the shooting end.

Speaking of opponents changing their pants, he still has the potential to be a current day Al MacInnis. That is a hefty comparison, but the booming shot is already there.

Sure, that video is from a shoot-around during a charity event. Even so, blasting a shot at 90-100 mph would take the color out of the face of most goaltenders.

The stick is part of the problem. Parayko wanted to use his slapshot early in his career, but his stick broke so often that he has become gun shy.

He needs to find that confidence. The Blues need his abilities on the powerplay.

The Nashville playoff series proved that having scoring potential from the blue line is a huge advantage. The Predators’ defenders, P.K. Subban in particular, just ripped away and it led to goals or goals off rebounds.

Parayko needs to be that for the Blues. Even if he does not score on his slapper, it is difficult to control rebounds when the shots are that hard.

Even if he doesn’t get a full windup, he needs to shoot more. The Blues have to have some shooting presence from the blue line.

Currently, teams know the Blues are shy about shooting from the point. That gives opposing teams the confidence to pressure the Blues relentlessly on special teams, taking away precious room from the forwards.

Other players have to improve in that areas as well. Parayko can’t fix it himself. He could go a long way toward doing so though.

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The scary thing about Parayko (for other teams) is there is still a lot of room to keep getting better. We all hope it will be with the Blues since the kid is already in the top half of defensemen in the league.

The more he learns, the more he will figure out that it is not a nice man’s league. Even if he never gets that mean streak, if he learns to harness the power of his shot then we could be in for a treat.

Let loose and unleash the fury.