The St Louis Blues' slump continued after a 3-2 defeat to the New York Rangers last night at Madison Square Garden, falling to another team in their own slump. Sitting at 7th in the Central Division and with a 3-3-4 record in their last 10 games, as of now the Blues currently have a little under 25% of a chance to make the postseason. Now you may be wondering why the playoff talk is so soon. It's because at this point last season, St Louis was cruising and was a solid contender for the postseason, unlike this year.
Part of the Blues' struggles has fallen on their offense, which currently ranks 30th in the league. St Louis does at least have the 12th-best power play, but even that's got its own issues with a 26th-ranked penalty kill. The other missing piece to the Blues' offensive success is the injuries. Top liners like Jake Neighbours and Robert Thomas have both been out with lower-body injuries, and even though Neighbours has since made his return from the IR, it'll take some time before he's back to the usual goalscorer he is. The other big question mark is Blues captain Brayden Schenn. The 34-year-old not only has had a low offensive output to start this season, scoring just 4 goals this season so far when he was a perennial 20+ goalscorer in past campaigns, but it's like he's been missing time with injury as well, even if he hasn't actually had anything happen in 3 years.
The point is, Schenn's number indicates he's getting closer and closer to retirement. At age 34, most players wouldn't be able to produce as much as they had in their prior younger years. Not only that, but Schenn's name has also been bouncing around trade rumour circles for quite some time now. Even though the deadline isn't until March 6 of next year, general trade talks have started to spark across the league, and not just for struggling teams like the Blues. With that in mind, would the Blues make a deal this early to trade away Schenn if his numbers continue to dip? If, in the off chance, such a deal would happen, St Louis probably wouldn't get much for him, seeing as how most teams wouldn't want a near-35-year-old veteran that's well past his prime. Well, unless you're like Nashville last summer.
Going back to the Blues' offensive woes, it's also not quite the top liners like Neighbours and Thomas doing the primary goalscoring. The lower lines are, notably, Justin Faulk and Pius Suter, two defensemen, rather than St Louis' go-to offensive weapons in those top two mentioned. And even more interesting is that Schenn is on the Blues' 2nd offensive line, alongside two youngsters in Dalibor Dvorsky and Pavel Buchnevich, the latter of which is another constant in the Blues' offense. It's surprising Dvorsky and Buch have even been on the Blues' 2nd line, considering they've done even less, at least goalscoring-wise than Schenn, each only with a pair of goals in fewer games (13 for Dvorsky and 23 for Buchnevich)
The Blues head to Newark tomorrow to face the Devils in what will be a tough matchup, seeing as how New Jersey holds the league's 10th-best power play and 11th-best penalty kill. The Devils also have a better goals per game at 3.05 compared to the Blues' 2.65, 20th vs 27th in the league. New Jersey is also just a point behind the Carolina Hurricanes for the lead in the Metro Division, so this might not be a good pre-Thanksgiving feast for Blues fans to tune in tomorrow at 7 pm.