St. Louis Blues Exit The Playoffs With A Whimper

The St. Louis Blues had a heck of a year in 2015-16. Unfortunately, they couldn’t summon that incredible winning spirit enough and lost in convincing fashion to the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference Finals.

The St. Louis Blues should have had everything to play for. We should have seen the best they had to offer. We had every other time the Blues just had to. We didn’t see it in their final game of the season.

The Blues, to their credit, didn’t go quietly into the night in the end. However, they didn’t do enough from the beginning in any aspect of the game to win.

Blues fans thought they might get the team’s best when the puck dropped. They got outhustled on a few shifts, but almost scored in the first couple minutes. Alexander Steen was left alone in the slot, but his snap shot was stopped by the cuff of the glove of Martin Jones.

To compound matters, the Sharks went down the other way and scored. The Blues defense was lost, as they were throughout the game. Both d-men ended up behind the net, which allowed slippery Joe Pavelski to peel around and jam it in against an unsuspecting Brian Elliott.

The Blues never really threatened in that period after that. They got outshot 9-5 too, which just wasn’t enough from a team that needed to score the first goal, needed to come out on fire and needed to put tons of pressure on.

The Blues did rebound a little bit in the second period. They outshot the Sharks by an 11-10 margin and had some good push. Unfortunately, they couldn’t beat Jones and the defense was caught in quicksand again.

The Sharks, who were unbelievable at the skill all series long, scored on another deflected goal. Joel Ward knocked it past Elliott and gave the Fins a 2-0 lead.

St. Louis outshot the Sharks again in the third, but had a languid performance overall. The Sharks scored twice with goals from Ward and Joonas Donskoi and seemed to have the game sewed up and were moving on to the finals.

To add insult to injury, not only did the St. Louis Blues avoid the shutout but it was superstar Vladimir Tarasenko who finally got off the schnide.

Tarasenko scored not one, but two goals. The first was on somewhat of a broken, scramble play and Tarasenko finished it off with Jones rolling around like Jim Craig.

Tarasenko got the second goal with three and a half minutes left. He banked it in off the defender’s stick and snuck in between Jones’ blocker, pad and the post.

It was just too little, too late from both Tarasenko and all around.

The Sharks got an empty net goal to put the icing on the cake, but it was almost cruel the way the Blues decided to end it. They failed to play for 50 minutes and then began a push. Their star that had been eclipsed by the Sharks’ defense finally shined a little bit, but there just was not enough from either the player or the team for long enough to get the job done.

In the end, as disappointing as the game and the series was, the better team won. There were probably two or three losses in the series where you were left to wonder about that. The Blues played so badly that you pondered if this or that might have made the difference. In this one, it was the Sharks. The Blues could have done more, surely, but it might not have mattered. The Sharks deserved to win.

Negatives

Same old, same old in terms of the way this game played out like others in this series. The Blues played better in spurts, but they just couldn’t find things to come together enough for long enough to get it done.

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The passing. A lot of this has to go on the Sharks, because it just doesn’t seem like the Blues could go from a good passing team to one that couldn’t hit a pass from three feet away. Whatever the reason, we just started to see the return of the passes that went nowhere and the team turned it over.

Springboarding off that topic, one of the biggest differences between the two teams was zone exits. The Sharks made crisp passes and knew where there teammates were to exit their defensive zone. The Blues would often just fling it toward the blueline and pray it would go out.

The lack of offense. The Blues played better in this game than they did in some of their other losses to the Sharks, but they just couldn’t get enough going. With the exception of those good options early in the game, the Blues let the Sharks pin them to the wall for far too long in this game and the series.

The defense. There will be plenty of time for us all to calm down and make more rational decisions, but basing things on pure passion and the things that happened in this game, Colton Parayko is the only defenseman I know for sure I want back. Everyone else (maybe not Edmundson, but he made mistakes in earlier games/series) played so cluelessly at times that it turned a position of strength into a big weakness.

Positives

The Blues kept fighting. They didn’t play all that well, but at least the heads didn’t go down like they have in the past. Was it a little gut-wrenching that they scored two goals when there seemed so little to play for? Sure, but I’d rather see that from my team than letting the Sharks walk over them for another two goals against Elliott.

Brian Elliott. He wasn’t great in this game, but he wasn’t really allowed to be. He wasn’t tested that much, but he kept battling as well. It’s just a shame that the defense didn’t do enough in front of him to allow him a chance to be a difference maker.

Robby Fabbri. No, he didn’t get a point in this game but the kid fought so hard. He was getting beat up and pushed around and he just kept chugging. In the game and in the series, he was what everyone wanted to see from Tarasenko, in terms of effort at the very least.

Looking Forward

It’s hard not to feel like the Blues squandered a fantastic opportunity. They beat their arch-rival and nemesis. They beat the top-seeded team in the conference. They had things at their finger tips and let it slip away.

What hurts is that with the Stanley Cup being the hardest trophy to win in all of sports, there are no guarantees. Yes, they had a fantastic season, but there are no guarantees that next season will be the next step.

That said, this team went to the Western Conference Finals. Everyone was worried if they could get past the first round and they came within a few games of the Stanley Cup Finals.

There is something to say about beating the teams they did. There is something to be said to be one of the final four teams in the entire NHL.

When time passes and wounds heal, we’ll be able to look back on this season fondly. Even now, for me anyway, I can’t say I’d have rather lost to Chicago or Dallas just to avoid any pain.

It’s a disappointing way to end the season, but there is a bright side. By playing this deep into the year, there are only about 90 days or so until the team takes the ice again.

Next: No Goaltender Will Make All Blues Fans Happy

The team will be different. There are changes ahead, whether it be coaching, players, trades or signings.

Stick with us fans. We’re going to keep improving in our coverage as the Blues attempt to keep improving on the ice.

The summer will be long for all of us, but we’ll keep you up to date. Stay tuned to the site and on social media.

Thanks to the Blues for a wonderful season. Thank you to all of you for reading. Let’s Go Blues!

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