St. Louis Blues Finally Getting Good Even Strength Play

While the Blues have always found a way to win in 2019-20, their five-on-five play left a lot to be desired. It is finally at the level it has to be.

The St. Louis Blues were full of oddities on their quest to win the 2019 Stanley Cup. We all know about going worst to first.

The Blues also had a better road record than their home record for much of the season. This was particularly true in the playoffs. St. Louis won three of their four games in Winnipeg in the first round. The Blues only won one game at home in the Stanley Cup Final too.

They managed to come up with a new way to get past the odds to start 2019-20. While St. Louis has been at or near the top of the standings from the get go, you would not know it based on their five-on-five play.

Statistically speaking, the Blues power play has never been awful. As fans, we just see it often enough to see all the flaws, mistakes and things that should be done differently.

That said, the Blues have not had a power play they could live off of for years. Despite that, they were doing their best to absolutely have to need power play goals at the beginning of this season.

Through the first 19 games of the season, the Blues were an astounding minus-1 at five-on-five play. That just means they allowed one more goal than they scored at even/full-strength play.

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One might argue that is not terrible since the Blues have a good defense. The strength of the defense could be argued, but that still puts a lot of pressure on your goaltender.

If the Blues are not scoring at full strength, they are relying on their goaltender to keep zeroes on the board. That is unrealistic in any era.

It also puts more pressure on your power play. We have all said the Blues need to get better at making their opponents pay for going into the penalty box. However, if you force your special teams unit to be perfect, that is undue pressure on a unit that will only score three out of every 10 times at the very highest.

The reason the Blues were struggling five-on-five remains a mystery. You could chalk up early power play struggles to a new system and a new coach in charge of that unit. Everything else was the same.

The Blues have had injuries, but they have succeeded in spite of that. Oddly, the Blues five-on-five play was struggling when they were the healthiest.

Whatever the reason, St. Louis has righted the ship in the second part of the first half of the season. After being a minus team through 19 games, the Blues have been plus-14 over their next 20 games.

Not only are the Blues playing better five-on-five, but they seem to be scoring more too. The Blues have never had a truly high powered offense, other than a few times throughout their history, but 39 games into the year, they have 123 goals.

That’s not tops in the conference or the division, but it’s good enough. Only five teams in the conference have more goals than St. Louis and only the Colorado Avalanche have quite a few more. Most teams are within a couple goals.

It is not just the scoring either. The defense has solidified itself.

Justin Faulk looks confident playing mostly with Alex Pietrangelo, which looked like a failed experiment at first. That freed up Colton Parayko and Jay Bouwmeester to repair.

Vince Dunn has also shored up some of his mistakes and leads the team in plus/minus. Say what you will about that stat, but that means Dunn is on the ice for more goals than giving up and that has not always felt like the case.

It does not hurt that both goaltenders are playing spectacularly at the moment. That helps shut down some of the mistakes the Blues were making early on.

St. Louis won because of it’s five-on-five play last season. The idea they were suddenly not a five-on-five team to begin this year was a shock to the system.

Now that they have turned things around, we are seeing the fruits of their labors. They have gone on win streaks of four and seven (and counting) during their 20 game span.

This team is built for five-on-five play. Their power play is improved, but they lack the killer instinct with the man advantage. Put them at even strength and they will go for the kill.