St. Louis Blues: On The Sixth Day Of Bluesmas 2017

Goals have been somewhat of a feast or famine experience for the 2017-18 St. Louis Blues. They’ve been on both sides of the good and bad of it.

On the sixth day of Bluesmas, my true Blues gave to me six goose eggs laid, five scorers scoring, fourth best defending, three reinforced skates, two great goaltenders and an Adidas sweater under the tree. That’s right, there have been six shutouts involving your St. Louis Blues.

Unfortunately, the Blues have not been on the right side of the ratio. Six shutouts, but only two have been Blues wins. You can probably do the math on the rest.

From the negative side of things, the Blues have been shutout four times and several have happened in recent memory. St. Louis has failed to score twice in December alone and three times since Thanksgiving. The lone time they failed to score before that was in the beginning of November, in a rather disappointing performance against the Philadelphia Flyers.

The odd thing about some of these shutouts is they’ve come in all sorts. You get the games where the Blues just don’t have it or don’t have a good effort like the Philly game or the last one against Winnipeg.

More from Editorials

• St. Louis Blues Need Kasperi Kapanen To Be On Best Behavior
• Hayes’ Debut And Other Bold Predictions for the St. Louis Blues
• St. Louis Blues Captaincy Is Suddenly A Huge Problem For 2023-24
• St. Louis Blues National Games Cause More Problems Than They’re Worth
• St. Louis Blues Brayden Schenn Has To Be An Impact Player In 2023-24

You also get games on the opposite side of that. Against Nashville and especially against Tampa, the Blues played very well. They were just shut down by a hot goaltender in each case.

The same is true for the Blues when they’ve been on the positive side of the ledger. Two Blues shutouts of their opponents have been the same mixed bag.

The shutout against Dallas was good, but the Blues managed to keep most of the shots from innocuous positions on the ice. Jake Allen was not tested heavily even with 29 shots against.

Conversely, Carter Hutton was pelted in his shutout against Winnipeg. He literally saved the team and the win in that effort.

From the Blues perspective, you’d like their shutouts to be more of a team effort. It’s fine when you lose to a hot goaltender, but you don’t want to rely on your own too much.

Of course, these things happen over the course of your season. Some games, the defense just doesn’t have it. Other games, the offense just can’t find their stroke.

Whatever the case, hopefully the Blues can manage to get this ratio a little closer or on their side. Being shutout four times already this season is not embarrassing, but the offense has shown it should be too good for that to happen. The goaltending and defending has been too good not to have at least one or two more shutouts of their own too.

These things do have a tendency to even out over the course of a year. Still, when you’ve got top 10 defense and offense, you’d expect the shutout numbers to be a little more favorable. At the very least, you’d hope those shutouts would not be semi-blowouts, like the 4-0 loss to the Jets.

Next: Injuries Mount As Blais Goes On IR

Even so, praise should go to Hutton and Allen for their contributions. Their numbers could easily be higher given their play.

The Blues allowed only one goal in six of their wins. At least half of those could have easily been shutouts if a defensive play goes differently here or there. With that in mind, we could be looking at a different ratio if things just went slightly different.

C’est la vie (such is life). The Blues will keep cracking at it and hopefully the goals return while the defense remains stingy.