If there’s any good news to be had, it’s that the St. Louis Blues ended a four-game losing streak with a 2-1 win over the Utah Hockey Club to kick off February. This came following a streak that saw them let two division rivals shut them out, those two teams being the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche.
And if you’re looking at their upcoming schedule, feel free to cringe, because they got the Edmonton Oilers tonight before they play the Florida Panthers. Maybe the Chicago Blackhawks, who they face on February 8th, will give them a reprieve, but after the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Blues will face the mighty Winnipeg Jets before once again squaring off vs. the Avalanche.
Cringeworthy indeed. But it doesn’t need to be this way if the Blues immediately identify a few weaknesses and work on fixing them before this season ends and the playoff races fully heat up. Let’s check them out.
1 - Power play is still a struggle
It seems like head coach Jim Montgomery had this same problem during his waning days with the Boston Bruins. But to his credit, Boston’s situation hasn’t necessarily improved since they ousted him and he ended up in Gateway City.
As for the Blues, they’re currently better than the Bruins here, converting power plays 18.18 percent of the time. The bad news, however, is that they’re averaging 3.2 percent lower than the rest of the league, which is currently at a conversion rate of 21.38 percent.
The Blues have only drawn 121 penalties, well under the league average of 145 penalties. So they need to start making the most of all their opportunities and at least try and convert about 1 in every 5 to start things off.
2 - High-danger chances aren’t awful, but…
When you look at most of the major statistics for the Blues, they’re not bad. Yeah, offensively, they’ve struggled to score for stretches at a time, but they don’t lag too far behind most of the league average categories for the most part. Well, unless you count finishing sequences.
High-danger chances for, however, is a different story. The entire NHL has averaged 390 high-danger chances per team so far through that 53-game average, and the Blues are lagging behind with just 368. No, they’re not crazy far behind, but this has hurt them nonetheless.
How do we know this? Well, there’s the fact that they’ve converted 9.1 percent of those high-danger chances, good for 37 goals this season. As for the rest of the league, they’re scoring on just 8.6 percent or 37 overall.
No, the Blues aren’t the highest-scoring team out there, but they’re nearly averaging one goal for every 10 shots on goal when they forge high-danger chances. Jim Montgomery needs to find a way to get it through to his players to make them happen more often.
3 - Short-handed game remains a thorn in the side
The Blues short-handed game is still an eyesore every bit as much as their power play is. Through those 53 games, the Blues have a meager penalty kill percentage of just 71.76, well under the league average of 78.62.
Yeah, if you’re any good at math, that’s nearly seven percentage points, and what’s particularly disheartening is that the Blues don’t find themselves short-handed as often as the rest of the league. Before February 4th’s matchup, they’ve been forced into a 4-on-5 situation just 131 times, and the rest of the league has averaged 145.
It would be one thing if the Blues were short-handed every time you turned around, but they’ve proven they’re not the easiest team to lure into making mistakes that lead to penalties.