Blues Lose Three Straight, Then Dominate Anaheim

It’s been a weird twist of events for the St. Louis Blues this year, and we’re only six games into the season.

After sweeping the Detroit Red Wings in Sweden, the Blues came home and lost their first two games at the Scottrade Center, and then dropped the next game to Phoenix to expand their losing streak to three. But they rebounded in Anaheim against a tough Ducks team by shutting them out and winning 5-0. It has definitely been a surprising start for the Blues this season. At the start of the season, I predicted a 1-1 split with the Red Wings, wins against the Thrashers, Kings and Coyotes, and a loss to the Ducks. So far … none of that is right. Either I’m a terrible guesser, or the Blues are inconsistent. While both are true, I’ll lean more towards the latter. The Blues need to play hard every night. Sometimes they show a lot of heart, and other times they just show up completely flat – especially in the first period. This has to change if they want to be a successful hockey team. We all saw what they can do down the stretch – by going from 15th place to 6th last year after the All-Star break – but it wasn’t easy, so why not just play hard every game at the beginning of the year to avoid digging yourself such a huge hole later? The team currently stands at 3-2-1 with 7 points, which isn’t bad by any means. But I still expect them to improve a little more, and I’m sure they will because Andy Murray won’t put up with inconsistency either. The Blues have still played some very exciting games – but they could just be a little better, that’s all.

Let’s review the last four games…

First, the three losses:

1.) October 8th, vs. Atlanta — I was at the home opener, and while it was a great time since the Scottrade Center was electric, unfortunately the team on the ice didn’t share the same ‘electricity.’ The Blues lost 4-2, and they were kind of a disappointment. Keith Tkachuk and Roman Polak netted the goals for St. Louis, and to be honest they were really the only two players that showed up to play. Nobody else stood out much, and Barret Jackman injured his ankle in the second period and was later placed on IR, but he should return to the lineup this weekend against Minnesota or Dallas. Back to the game, Keith Tkachuk played well once again, as he’s been one of the best players on the team so far. It seems like he always gets off to hot starts though, so it’s not really a surprise. Besides the outcome of the game, it was still a fun experience to see the player introductions (where T.J. Oshie got the loudest applause) and watch the opening video, which I think is cool this year. I will feature that video in a different post shortly, so stay tuned.

2.) October 10th, vs. Los Angeles — The Blues looked to rebound against an LA team that I still consider everage at best, but they couldn’t do it. LA’s weak spot is definitely their goaltending, but the Blues still couldn’t beat them. They only scored one goal, by Alex Steen late in the 3rd period, and were stone-walled aside from that. They looked flat again in this game as they failed to feed off the crowd’s energy. The Kings are a team that the Blues should beat, but obviously that didn’t happen, and it’s disappointing to drop the first two home games, especially when the crowd is all excited. Chris Mason was exceptional in goal, but the Blues didn’t muster up enough offense. You have to score more than one goal to win, and it’s not like they were facing Roberto Luongo. Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick is nothing to write home about (yet), but he sure did a good job stopping the Blues.

3.) October 15th, at Phoenix — After a long break, the Blues took flight to the Desert and faced the Coyotes, who obviously are dealing with tons of rumors about the team moving. There were lots of empty seats at Jobing.com Arena, as I believe the official attendance was around 6,000. Yikes. That is bad. In my opinion, the ‘Yotes need to move away from Phoenix. It’s just not a hockey city. But anyways, about the game: The Blues got off to a good start, but couldn’t hang on. David Backes and Paul Kariya scored for the Blues, and wow, Kariya’s goal was a funny one! As ‘Yotes defenseman Keith Yandle started to skate past the Coyotes net, Paul Kariya swooped by and slapped the puck past Ilya Bryzgalov who wasn’t even paying attention. It was a lucky situation for Kariya, but good, smart hockey players are able to make those heads up plays. The Blues had the lead for most of the game until Scottie Upshall tied it up in the 3rd period to send it into overtime. After back-and-forth action, the Coyotes scored on a deflection by Ed Jovanovski to win the game. The “goal” looked like it deflected off Jovanovski’s glove which should have disallowed it, but instead, the refs decided that there wasn’t conclusive enough evidence on the replay to overturn it, so they called it a goal. This was a tough loss to swallow, especially after a play like that to a Phoenix Coyotes team that isn’t the most skilled. This loss expanded St. Louis’ losing streak to three.

Next, the Blues finally picked up a win to end the losing streak…

October 17th, at Anaheim — The Blues certainly rebounded strongly in this game, as they just dominated the Ducks 5-0. Unlike the past three games, the Blues came out flying and put a lot of shots on net … and fortunately, a lot of those shots went in. The Blues scored three goals on 11 shots on Anaheim goalie Jonas Hiller, so he was pulled pretty quickly in favor of Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who is now the backup after leading Anaheim to a Stanley Cup a couple years ago. But Giguere didn’t fare much better, as the Blues scored two more goals on him. Andy McDonald was the star of the night, scoring two nice goals – and Patrik Berglund, Carlo Colaiacovo and T.J. Oshie also put the puck in the net. It was an all-around great game, and let’s give major credit to Ty Conklin too. He got the start ahead of Mason, and he was tremendous. He shut out the high-flying Ducks who have one of the best offenses in the NHL, and he improved his career record against the Ducks to 4-0. Conklin was outstanding and made some great saves. The offense was great too, and we also saw the Blues’ first fight of the season when B.J. Crombeen beat Mike Brown. Crombeen landed some solid shots and looked pretty good, and he was definitely itching to drop the mitts. Earlier in the game, Anaheim enforcer George Parros laid out T.J. Oshie with a big hit, and Crombeen went right to Oshie’s aid. He dropped the mitts, grabbed Parros and started throwing punches to the back of Parros’ head, but the refs broke them up and Crombeen received a roughing penalty. But it’s great to see him playing with that kind of energy. One thing I wish is that Janssen would man up and drop the gloves with Parros, because that’s his job, but oh well … The good guys won 5-0, so it was a great night.

Three stars against the Ducks:

1.) Ty Conklin
2.) Andy McDonald
3.) Carlo Colaiacovo

The Blues are now 3-2-1 and will take on the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins tonight, who are led by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. The Blues will need to come out fast and put some pressure on goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, but it will be tough. The Pens are on fire, sitting at 7-1 through eight games.
GO BLUES!