3 ways the St. Louis Blues can maximize their chances to reach the NHL playoffs
Put the puck onto the sticks of playmakers and get it to the net
The Blues are nowhere near one of the better scoring teams in hockey, even during arguably their best stretch of the season. They only scored 71 times in those 23 games, good for just 3.09 goals per game, which averages to a solid, but unspectacular 253 through an 82-game stretch.
When you put that result against last season’s overall number, it would have ranked 20th in the NHL, and just seven goals fewer than the 260 St. Louis scored last season. To improve those numbers, the Blues must find a way to get the puck onto their best players’ sticks more often, and that comes with playing a better overall game in the offensive zone.
Luckily for the Blues, they have playmakers who can make this happen, most notably Pavel Buchnevich, Robert Thomas, Jake Neighbours, Jordan Kyrou, and Brandon Saad. Each has scored between 20 and 24 times this season, and they have a solid shooting percentage between 14.2 and 17.8 percent sans Kyrou, who is sitting at 10.8 percent.
Knowing they have players who can find the net often is reassuring, but they can’t score if they don’t have an opportunity to. With just 1,879 shots on goal, the Blues have just 28.4 per game, and that number needs to increase to the over 30 mark. For as long as they remain in the playoff race, they must get more shots to the net, ideally with the players listed above.
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(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference and QuantHockey)