The St. Louis Blues had not played poorly over their last handful of games, but the results were not there. In Calgary, they were not always at their best, but the end result was what they wanted.
The St. Louis Blues were in the midst of a three-game losing streak. The team had only let a losing streak slip past three games once and were hoping not to make it twice.
The entire game was slightly odd for the Blues, but the start of the game was just as weird. St. Louis allowed a few quick chances on goal, forcing Jordan Binnington to make a couple key saves early.
Despite being outshot 4-1, the Blues scored on their first shot of the night. It was a beautiful cross-ice give and go, finished off with a nifty scoop shot over the goaltender.
That lead lasted only about five minutes. A strange delay of game penalty on Zach Sanford that could not be repeated if he tried to scoop the puck out 100 more times set up a Calgary power play that would score on their first shot. That would become a theme.
Calgary’s next two goals all came on the power play. All three of those first three goals came on the first shot of the power play too.
The Flames second goal was unnecessary. The penalty call was weak – a holding call that was basically just Ryan O’Reilly going for position against a guy without the puck. The goal came from the slot with the shooter unchallenged because he found the soft spot in the defense and neither defender challenged Sean Monahan because they thought he might pass.
However, the Blues would answer with two late first period goals. The tying goal was David Perron just jamming it in on a good effort play. The third goal was Jaden Schwartz one-time scooping in a great cross-ice pass.
The Blues defense got very leaky in the second period. St. Louis allowed two more goals putting the Flames up 4-3 after 40 minutes of play.
St. Louis battled back and tied the game in the third period. They thought they had the tying goal after that, but it was challenged and ruled offside.
The Blues took a penalty late in overtime, but did manage to kill that off. Despite only scoring one goal and going winless in the shootout in 2019-20, the Blues managed to get the win. They scored two goals on their first two shots and Binnington made two saves.
Cons: Penalty kill
The Blues penalty kill has not been bad this season. It has not been spectacular either, currently going at just over 82%, which is two percentage points over the league average.
More from Bleedin' Blue
- St. Louis Blues Prospects Shine And Fizzle In Prospects Showcase
- St. Louis Blues Giving Nick Ritchie A Look Is No Lose Situation
- St. Louis Blues Torey Krug Already Injured Before 2023-24 Season
- St. Louis Blues Need Kasperi Kapanen To Be On Best Behavior
- Former St. Louis Blues Forward Going Into Hall Of Fame
The odd thing was they were not terrible in this game either. The results were not good though.
The Blues PK never really got a chance to kill off anything. None of the three penalties would cross the minute mark. Calgary would score on their first shot on goal each and every time on the power play, giving them a final tally of 3-4 and that fourth power play was in overtime.
The main detraction against the team on the PK was a slight tendency to back off. They allowed Calgary too much space, which let them get those shots off unchallenged.
Pros/Cons: Early offense
The goals the Blues scored early in the game were all great goals. They were working their passes on the attack to almost perfection.
The first one was great vision on the part of both Alex Steen and Robert Thomas. The fact they both got their passes through the seam, especially Thomas’ setup, and then Steen’s ability to chip the goaltender was fantastic.
The third goal was just as nice. This time it was a great setup by Brayden Schenn to find a wide open Schwartz in front and Schwartz made no mistake.
The fact it came with just 35 seconds left in the period was even better. That could easily have been a back-breaking moment for the Flames if the Blues found a way to really put the squeeze on them.
That was the negative part of the offense in that they did not take advantage of that momentum. The Blues did not get into double digits in the shot total until almost halfway through the second period.
It is great to have three goals on eight first period shots. However, that is far from the norm and the Blues do get in the habit of not shooting at times. They are not on the level of some of the Ken Hitchcock teams for passing up shooting opportunities, but they do still look for the perfect pass too much at times.
It was just strange for that to be the case. The game was so loose defensively, but it seemed like Calgary was the only team to really take advantage of that.
Pros: Actually winning a shootout
The Blues have plenty of talent on this team and plenty of guys that can score. For whatever reason, even prior to the 2019-20 season, the Blues just have not been good at shooutouts.
They have been particularly bad at them this season, even if they have not had too many. Despite 15 overtime games, the Blues took part in just their fourth shootout. However, they were 0-3 in their last three and had one goal during all those three games.
Finally, against the Flames, the Blues tripled their shootout goal total. They scored two goals on two shots, which is almost unheard of with this team.
David Perron netted the first, just by picking up some speed and rifling the shot home to the glove side – no fancy business. O’Reilly went wide right, which I don’t like, but he came right back in front, timed it right and shoved it through the five hole.
Overview
This was just a very weird game overall. St. Louis was not bad, but they just were not themselves either.
Their offense made the most of the chances they did take. However, they did not take a ton of chances until the third period.
The penalty kill has honestly looked much worse at times in the year. Still, they allowed three power play goals on three shots before finally killing off the most important penalty at the end of overtime.
Despite being a team with good faceoff takers, the Blues lost the faceoff battle again.
The goaltending issue is rearing its ugly head for the Blues again as well. Binnington is now going through what Jake Allen did a couple seasons ago.
There really was not anything Binnington could do about any of the goals. Maybe his stick could have been placed differently on Calgary’s fourth goal and maybe he could have been positioned differently on the third. However, Binnington stopped two breakaways and a couple odd-man rushes too.
St. Louis got a decent game from Sammy Blais. He returned to his old self, throwing a reverse hit early on in the game.
Despite Blais returning, the Blues lost Steen. He exited at some point late in the second or very early in the third with a lower body injury and did not play again. He had 8:43 ice time, but it was never really said when or how he got hurt.
The Blues nailed for another offside when scoring a goal. It was the right call and it’s good that the league can correct these things, but it just stinks to have some of the joy taken away from the game.
Overall, at least the Blues got the win. The announcers can say it is great to get a point all they want, but only one point from this game would not have been satisfactory in any way.
St. Louis has plenty of stuff to clean up. Hopefully they’ll be able to find some practice time with two days between games and only a short trip to Edmonton.