The St. Louis Blues were one of the worst teams in 2023-24 in these three stats
The St. Louis Blues had some good things happen throughout the 2023-24 season, but they weren’t enough to get them over the threshold and into the playoffs. Some of the reasons for this are displayed below, and you’ll also notice a common denominator: Every single one of these misfortunes can be geared toward puck possession.
Chances are, a couple more common denominators will jump out at you, showing just how bad the Blues had it offensively at times this past season.
Shots on goal
The Blues finished 2023-24 with just 2,370 shots on goal, the ninth-lowest total of 2023-24, and a big reason why they stagnated so much as a scoring unit. They ended the year with just 28.9 shots on goal per game, and other than the Vancouver Canucks, the eight teams that finished lower than St. Louis resided near or in the bottom half of the NHL in scoring.
But the Blues do have plenty of talent in a top-six that should only get better, so if they improved both their shots on goal and overall scoring productivity, it shouldn’t surprise us. The main issue, however, is this: How fast will the new additions on the bottom-six get up to speed? The quicker they do, the better the Blues will be in getting shots on net.
Power play
St. Louis had the eighth-worst power play unit that converted just 18 percent of their opportunities. How bad did this hurt them last season? Consider this: The Blues had the 13th most power play opportunities with 250, so if they managed to convert just 20 percent of them, or two whole percentage points higher than what they attained, maybe they would have made the playoff race even more interesting.
As with getting shots on net, this shouldn’t be as much of an issue this season as youngsters and seasoned veterans alike on the unit should mesh better and faster. Whatever happens, they can’t afford to stagnate or move backward unless they want to make things interesting for themselves in the Central Division.
Goals for per game
2.85 goals per game isn’t putting very many teams into the playoffs, and the only two teams to earn a postseason trip in the bottom 11 were the New York Islanders and the Washington Capitals. No other team in the bottom 16 made it, for that matter, so if the Blues want to contend, they’d probably want to hit the 3.10 goals per game mark or higher.
That said, the Blues goaltending tandem may be good enough to keep them from resorting to that number since Jordan Binnington and Joel Hofer will keep plenty of pucks out of their own net.
But I also wouldn’t rely on one unit to bail out my forwards if I were head coach Drew Bannister. That said, he doesn’t need to find a way to help his team attain more shots on net; he needs to figure out a way to get them into the net.
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(Statistics powered by Hockey-Reference)