St. Louis Blues: Top 3 Areas Of Concern For 2019-20

With the season just 13 days away from opening, the St. Louis Blues have three things they should be concerned about when the puck drops against Washington on October 2.

When you go around the room and poll St. Louis Blues fans asking them what they’re biggest concerns are for the 2019-20 team you will get one of two answers. The power play and the workload of Jordan Binnington. You can interchange these two as the top concern as they seem to crop up just as frequent as the other.

The Power Play

For this article, and from my own opinion, I will say that the power play is the top concern. Now some of you, I hope, read my article on the Blues power play. It had a slightly positive spin on it showing that the Blues finished tenth overall in the league last year converting at 21.1% clip.

Respectable and acceptable to any hockey fan. What that number didn’t show is how they fell to 16th out of 16 teams in the playoffs. What it didn’t reflect was the poor puck possession, lack of creativity, gutless performances we all witnessed throughout the season.

If the Blues plan to repeat they will need a far better powerplay in 2019-20, and if the preseason suggests anything it has shown Colton Parayko on the top unit.

Something I suggested should happen in my initial article about the Blues power play. If that is a foretelling of things to come, then it shows that Craig Berube and his new power-play guru Marc Savard understand that we need to mix it up.

Jordan Binnington’s Workload

Thank God for Binnington! What a half-season that young man had. Unprecedented, record-setting and frankly impossible to duplicate. I am not saying that anything Binnington did last year was a fluke, or that lady luck had more to do with it than Jordan himself. The numbers suggest he is legit!

What I am saying is, that it is really, really difficult to put up the kind of GAA and SV% that Winnington had last year over the course of an entire NHL season where he is expected to play 50+ games. He had a 1.89 GAA and .927 SV% for the 2018-19 season. That was over the course of 32 games.

Something I find to be greatly overlooked is the fact that after 32 regular season games Binnington started 26 playoff games! Let’s do the math. That is, Oh! Look at that, 58 games! A number he’s predicted to start over the course of this season!

Now his GAA and SV% fell off in the playoffs where he held a 2.46 GAA and .914 SV%. Could that have been because of fatigue? I don’t know as I’m not the player and I’m not in the locker room. Let’s play devil’s advocate here and say that it was. What does that mean?

It means that Binnington has a much better idea of what kind of training and conditioning he needed to get done to be ready for the starting gig in 2019-20. One player that has just seemed to rise to the occasion. Quietly, confidently and assertively Binner will be prepared and will be fine for the added workload.

The Top Line

Wha!? The Top Line?! Yes, the top line. The line of Brayden Schenn, Jaden Schwartz, and Vladimir Tarasenko. The St. Louis Blues will need the top line to consistently be the top line throughout the regular season and playoffs if they hope to defend their Stanley Cup.

My perception of it is that when Tarasenko, Schenn, and Schwartz are out there, playing physical, controlling the puck and peppering shots on goal the Blues as a whole perform much better than when the line is out there just drifting around.

A lot of this “drifting around” perception seems to come from Tarasenko himself. There are games where you feel he is just checked out and not in the game. You can’t say this about Schwartz as he seems always to be hounding the puck whether times are good or bad.

Schenn seems to have the same work ethic and mentality as Schwartz. Hounding the puck and if the offense is clicking, then the physicality is definitely going to be showing.

So why would I lump the entire line into the third concern, if it seems it’s just Tarasenko that gets lost in the shuffle during certain games? Simple, Schenn, Schwartz, and Tarasenko have played alongside each other long enough to know and see when one of them is “off.” Part of being a good teammate is pushing the buttons of your linemates to get them going.

Maybe that’s while on the bench you lean over and say something. Perhaps it’s a jab at the linemates character? Maybe you insult his mom? Maybe you compliment his choice of suit that evening? Whatever it is, you have to do it. Tarasenko is a competitor, and I believe if he was on my line, I’d be up to his competitive arse pushing for the Tara Senk Show every night!

One way I’ve noticed that Tarasenko gets engaged is through physicality. His best games have all accompanied some of his most physical games. I’m not suggesting it’s Schwartz or Schenn’s responsibility to get Vladi ready to play. He’s a professional and an adult, but all of us, in any profession, need a leg up from time to time. Get a competition started with who lands the first hit in the game. Maybe the third hit is the one that matters?

Essentially the three concerns going into the season are a single concern — the power play. If the power play clicks and is effective, it will solve the Tarasenko engagement issue most nights. It will keep the pressure off of Binnington and allow the Blues to do what they do, shut down opponents.