St. Louis Blues Need Consistency In Inconsistent Times

The St. Louis Blues are in an awkward period of their 2019-20 season due to early injuries. However, a unit that has been rather healthy has seen next to no consistency.

One of the more interesting things about the St. Louis Blues as they hit the quarter mark of the 2019-20 season is how little injuries have impacted them in the grand scheme of things. That is not to say the injuries are not beginning to have an impact but the most inconsistent group on the team is actually one that has had perfect health thus far.

The Blues defensive unit has yet to miss a game for anything other than altering a look or going for a certain matchup. The only two defenders that have not played 20 games through the team’s first 20 games is Carl Gunnarsson and Robert Bortuzzo. Those two have swapped spots here and there with Gunnarsson getting the lion’s share of the work mainly due to being left-handed.

The Blues might be getting to a point where Bortuzzo needs more of a look. I fully understand the idea that the Blues don’t want four right-handed shots on defense, which would force someone onto their off wing. However, if the side of the ice a defender plays on is all that is keeping the current units together, then a change might not be bad. We certainly are not keeping pairs together because of chemistry.

Through the first quarter of the season, despite having perfect health *knock on wood*, the Blues have tinkered with their defensive pairs as though they were rolling out Yahtzee dice. It is hyperbole, but it honestly feels like Craig Berube just rolls the dice with names on them and that’s how they get paired up.

The Blues forward lines, even losing two high-profile players like Alex Steen and Vladimir Tarasenko, have stayed together through thick and thin. The main exception there is moving Robert Thomas straight from the third line to the top line to replace Tarasenko.

Berube has stubbornly kept Zach Sanford on the second line even though fans cannot see whatever the coaching staff sees to keep him in the lineup. Most of use assumed Jacob de la Rose would be put on the fourth line to move a different player up the roster, but the Blues have pretty much solidified the fourth line as being untouchable.

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That’s all well and good. Until the games 18-20, the offense was humming pretty good even with the injuries. However, even as injuries have begun to show some cracks in offensive firepower, the team sticks with them.

Why then does the team seem to have no interest in playing the same defensive pairs together? The only pair we get on a regular basis is Jay Bouwmeester and Colton Parayko. The other four defenders never seem to know who they will be with game to game or even shift to shift.

The player hurt the most by this is Justin Faulk. We can sit here and analyze why he is not scoring or putting up points the way we thought he might when acquired, but a lot of his ailments can be linked to not knowing who he will be playing with, or in some cases it is due to who he is playing with.

Thankfully, the Blues stopped pairing him with Vince Dunn a few games prior to this article. While both Faulk and Dunn are good players and Dunn continues to improve, neither are a defense-first player. The other team seemed to rack up chances like billiard balls when those two were on the ice.

Ideally, in a five-on-five situation, you would have one offensive minded defender and one that is willing to sit back and cover defensively. Faulk and Dunn’s first motive, and sometimes second too, is to get up ice and get involved with the offense.

Oddly enough, Faulk seemed to be at his best when he was playing with Bouwmeester. Bouwmeester knows his offensive days are behind him, so he focuses on defensive positioning and zone exits.

Faulk was free to focus more forward. Then, for no other reason than to put Bouwmeester and Parayko back together, the team put Faulk back with Dunn. It made no sense.

It was almost like the two were castoffs that did not fit with anyone else. Lately Dunn has been paired with Alex Pietrangelo because Pietrangelo is good enough on both sides to make up for any of Dunn’s shortcomings.

The problem is, whether you take the focus off Faulk or not, the entire unit is just not getting things done. Their overall goals against might not be awful, but the way the team is playing is not indicative of a team that prides itself on defense.

St. Louis is regularly getting outshot and also allowing a lot of high-quality chances against. The Blues have allowed over 30 shots in four of their last five games.

The only game they allowed fewer than 30 was against Arizona on November 12. Even with only 22 shots against, Jordan Binnington was called on to make several quality saves to preserve a win.

Some of it boils down to individual play and some of it is total team defense. However, it seems hard to deny the Blues blue-liners would benefit with a little more consistency with who they are playing with.

Pietrangelo is having a potential career year, but you could chalk more of that to playing in a contract year than any help he’s getting from a fellow defender. Gunnarsson has been all but useless thus far, but Bortuzzo continues to sit the bench due to this lefty/righty thing.

Nobody should take this as saying Bortuzzo is the answer. Likely he is not. Nevertheless, this spin the wheel way of booking your defensive lines is just crazy.

If putting Bouwmeester or Parayko with a different defender would help that person just as much as they help one another, the team needs to do it. It is great to have a “shutdown pair”, but if mistakes are being made elsewhere, then the greater good is needed.

Whatever the pairs Berube chooses, it would be helpful to stick with them for a few games, not just a few shifts. Give the defenders the same confidence the forwards have.