3 catastrophic misfortunes that sank the St. Louis Blues season
While the St. Louis Blues aren’t completely out of the 2024 playoff race, their chances of making it to the postseason have grown less than slim.
The St. Louis Blues need to basically win out, and the Vegas Golden Knights or the Los Angeles Kings need to lose out if they have any hope of making the playoffs this season. That probably won’t happen, and it will be the second season in a row that the Blues will be watching the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs from their homes.
So what hurt the Blues this season, and why aren’t they most likely not heading to the playoffs? You can point to quite a few reasons, but the primary one is that this team was never able to get consistent, even after Drew Bannister took over for Craig Berube.
While Bannister has been an improvement over Berube, the Blues still didn’t win enough throughout what could be his short tenure as the team’s head coach. Had St. Louis managed to make things more interesting following Bannister’s promotion to interim head coach, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, but instead gearing up for what will be an exciting postseason.
Numerous issues sank the St. Louis Blues 2023-24 season
This isn’t to say Bannister did a poor job in Gateway City, as he’s managed a 28-18-4 record, which equals 60 points and 1.2 points per game, adjusted for between 98 and 99 points throughout an 82-game span. Since the Western Conference has been beyond competitive this season, there is no guarantee that number would have catapulted the Blues into the postseason, but they could have been making things very interesting in the wild card race.
Unfortunately, that most likely isn’t happening, but it could have if the Blues didn’t suffer three major setbacks, some of which haunted them all season. Let’s explore those three setbacks, discuss what happened, and why they will ultimately keep St. Louis from making the 16-team playoff field in 2024.
This has been a disappointing season for Blues fans, but you still have a chance to end this season on top with the help of FanDuel! All you have to do is sign up, deposit $10 or more and then bet $5 or more on ANY game. You'll win $150 in bonus bets, guaranteed! Click this link to sign up with FanDuel today!
Getting swept by the San Jose Sharks was just inexcusable
Suppose the Blues earned all four possible points over their last two matchups against the lowly San Jose Sharks instead of one. Although the Vegas Golden Knights have two games in hand, the Blues would nonetheless be well within striking distance with 90 points, and it would take just a small slip-up from the former to put St. Louis on track to make the race for the second wild card spot far more interesting.
Likewise, 90 points instead of their current 87 would also have put them just three points behind the Los Angeles Kings as of Monday morning. So, if Vegas clawed back into third in the Pacific Division, the Blues still would have had a good chance for the second wild card spot in a race against LA.
A couple of weeks back, I penned the Blues then-upcoming matchups with the Oilers, the Predators, and the Hurricanes as the three most important if they wanted to make the playoffs. Never would myself or most of us have thought they would drop the last two games of their season series against the Sharks and earn just one point in the process.
Inability to win on the road put the Blues behind the eight-ball
All season, the Blues could not consistently win hockey games outside of the Enterprise Center, and it has cost them in the long run. As of April 8th, this team is 18-19-3 on the road, good for just 39 of their 87 points, or 44.9 percent of their overall points.
At the Enterprise Center, it’s been a different story as St. Louis is an incredible 23-13-2, good for 48, or 55.1 of their current points total. Currently, six of the West’s eight playoff teams have won at least 20 games on the road, and the two that haven’t - Vegas and the Colorado Avalanche, have a points total of 0.500 or better outside of their home arena.
Imagine if the Blues simply had two more wins on the road - they would be 20-17-3 and with 43 total points, good for 91 on the season. Even if their mishaps against San Jose persisted, two more wins would keep this team well in serious playoff contention with just a few games to go in the season.
Sure, Vegas would still have two games in hand heading into Monday, and the Kings would have one, but the Blues chances would have been way better at the moment.
Scoring inconsistencies haunted the Blues all season
The Blues have struggled with one of the worst scoring units in the NHL this season, ranking just 24th in the league with 227 goals, good for just 2.91 per game. It’s not that you can’t have a playoff-caliber hockey team with such meager scoring units, but it doesn’t make the job any easier when your team also sits 16th in the league in goals allowed with 240.
If the Blues want to make the playoffs beyond the shadow of a doubt next season, they need to add another established scorer to the lineup and they also need their top scorers to stay consistent from October to April. That hasn’t happened, as Pavel Buchnevich and Robert Thomas lost some steam heading into March, and their scoring inconsistency persisted into April.
Bringing in one more proven goal-scorer will dramatically help St. Louis, and it doesn’t need to be a game-changer. If they brought in even a complementary piece or two, it would really help this team get more consistent in the offensive zone. Another physical forward who isn’t afraid to force their way near the crease would also help the Blues deflect a few more of those long-range shots into the net.
feed
(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)