The St. Louis Blues rolled into their twelfth game of the season with confidence and feeling like they had turned a corner. They got smacked back to reality by the Minnesota Wild.
The St. Louis Blues have proved one thing in this short portion of the 2018-19 season. Do not ever think the positives outweigh the negatives.
As feared, they tricked us with some decent performances in their last few games. The Blues had put up a lot of goals, showing us that the offense was something to rely on. Unfortunately, even the best scoring teams can’t rely on offense alone and the Blues are not yet even one of the best scoring teams.
So, when Minnesota came to town for the first time of the season, it was a lesson right from the start and the Blues were not the teachers. St. Louis got smacked around in just about every way other than faceoffs and “hits”. Even the faceoffs were not their usual bright spot as it ended up going 50/50.
Of course, as will happen from here until the end of days, games like this give Jake Allen haters more ammunition. By now it has gotten to the point that if you blame Allen for everything, you don’t know anything about goaltending and very little about hockey. Allen has not always been the solution, as we saw on the breakaway goal, but he’s not the biggest problem. You give Allen the same defense we had in 2015-16, this team would be at the top of the division.
Unfortunately, despite the names on the backs of the sweaters being basically the same, this defense is nowhere near that team. They just look like ghosts, floating around out there, perhaps waiting to be eaten by Pac-man.
Pros: Power play
We will start off with something good since there was so very little of it in this game. For the first time in what feels like years, the Blues power play can actually be counted on to produce.
The bad thing is that is the only thing you can count on with this team. They still struggle with zone entrance and pass the puck too much, but overall, they seem to have this man-advantage thing down.
The lone goal the Blues scored in this game was a prime example. St. Louis did a good job of holding the puck in the zone on a clearing attempt and then had good patience.
They fed it to Vladimir Tarasenko on the right circle, where he needs to always be. While I would have preferred him to shoot in the moment, he set up Ryan O’Reilly with a great cross-ice pass that O’Reilly buried.
It was not all sunshine for the power play as they had three other chances with a man up. The way the game turned out, if they converted on even two of those, it is a completely different game. However, even the best power plays rarely do better than 25% and that’s what the Blues were.
Cons: Alex Pietrangelo and Jay Bouwmeester
When dealing with the negatives, I rarely call guys out by name in the headline. I try to say the defense as a whole has been bad, which it has.
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However, this game highlighted just about every bad thing you could find about Alex Pietrangelo and Jay Bouwmeester. You could make an argument that one is bringing the other down, but they are just totally inept right now.
The haters will blame Allen for not stopping the breakaway shot. However, a careless turnover where Bouwmeester held on to the puck for far too long before coughing it up, led directly to the breakaway. You simply cannot turn the puck over in that spot and he did.
As far as Pietrangelo goes, we might as well turn him into a forward because he’s got so much practice screening the goalie. If he had half the success screening other goalies as he does his own, we would have about two or three more goals per game. Additionally, apparently he is a tip expert since he deflected another puck past his own goaltender again.
Both of them seem to have cement in their skates as well. Bouwmeester at least has the excuse of age and coming off an injury. I’m not sure what Petro’s excuse is. It is beyond me how you can go from Norris Trophy candidate to one of the worst on this team.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much difference separating them would do. They’ve reached the point where both have been so bad that they’ll just drag down whomever they play with.
Pietrangelo got shoved around like he was a rag doll and Bouwmeester has never been overly physical. It is just a disaster right now.
Pros: Penalty Kill
While the power play was only successful 25% of the time, the penalty kill managed to do their job 100%. They ended up killing off all four Minnesota power plays.
While you would much rather not put yourself shorthanded that many times, it is good to know this team is capable of killing them off. The main negative to the penalty kill is you are using up valuable energy that could be put toward a comeback.
St. Louis spent 10 minutes in the penalty box. While you are not shorthanded the entire time, since Minnesota only had four power plays, it still detracts from the offensive effort.
Even so, focusing on the unit overall, they managed to communicate with one another well. They put pressure on when needed and Allen came up with some good saves when needed.
You do not want to rely on your special teams too much, but if they can continually hold teams off the board, you will be in a better spot.
Cons: Shots Against vs. Shots For
This one sort of ties into the Bouwmeester and Pietrangelo thing, but applies to the team overall. The spotlight is definitely on the defense, however.
Allen made 40 saves in this game. Despite the uptick in scoring in the NHL, having 40 saves in a game is still not normal.
Since we all know the final was 5-1, just let that set in for a moment. Your goaltender made 40 saves and you still allowed five goals. That means the defense is not doing their job at all.
On the flip side, the Blues could only muster 16 shots. That is hard for me to wrap my head around. A team that is capable of scoring five and seven goals can turnaround and only get 16 shots? A team that supposedly prides itself on being competitive can’t even get half the shots of their opponent?
I understand that the Wild played best overall game of the season, but no team should be held down that much. There just is not enough fight back from this Blues team, offensively or defensively.
When teams start overwhelming them, they do not know how to answer so the shots pile up. Conversely, the offense shuts down because they are so busy scrambling around like ants in their own zone.
Overview
Well, it was nice while it lasted. Now we return to the mentality of it’s all gone wrong.
As mentioned, you have to give credit to Minnesota for coming into an opponent’s building and taking them behind the woodshed. They dominated the Blues from start to finish. They pushed St. Louis around.
That is half the problem with this team. They let teams have their way and there is no push back. I’m not even talking about actual fights, but just an overall feel.
This team seems to shut down when bad things start to happen. We have seen that with Blues teams in the past but this is even worse. They fold quicker than a collapsible card table.
Then fans just sit there and blame the goaltender when there are so many other issues with this team that it is not even funny.
As good as the offense can be, you cannot rely on it to score five goals per game. Even the best teams can’t sustain that type of scoring every night. Sometimes you just do not have it.
That’s why the defensive problems are so big. You need to be able to keep other teams from scoring in order to win. The Blues are incapable of doing that right now.
Things don’t get any easier for St. Louis coming up. Carolina has gotten off to a hot start and San Jose is still a beast to deal with too.