ST.
LOUIS – A
three-game winning streak on the line, a chance to gain a measure of
revenge against the Boston Bruins. It was all on the line for the St.
Louis Blues on Tuesday.
But
an all-too-familiar script played itself out despite an early lead
and a fight back, but in the end, it was the Bruins who scored three
unanswered goals in the third period of a 5-2 win at Enterprise
Center.
Robert
Thomas scored twice, Pavel Buchnevich had two assists to extend his
point streak to four games, and Joel Hofer made 26 saves but it
wasn’t enough to prevent the Blues (11-13-7) from gaining that
elusive three-game winning streak.
“I
thought we were a little too loose after the first 10 minutes,”
Blues
coach Jim Montgomery said. “I liked our first 10 minutes of the
game, and I didn’t mind our first whatever it was when we tied it
up (in the third period). I don’t know if it was eight minutes into
the third. That wasn’t too bad, but besides that, we were very
loose not stopping in the house. Defensively, not sprinting to loose
pucks enough.”
Let’s
take a look at the game observations:
*
Blues had a chance to grab game after tying it in third and failed –
The Blues were down a goal heading into the third period against a
team that had been spotless in that situation (13-0-0) heading into
this game.
But
when Thomas tied the game at 4:51, it leveled the score at 2-2, and
on home ice, one would think the home side would step up the
intensity and take control of the momentum.
That
was hardly the case because the Bruins, now 14-0-0 when leading after
two, found another gear and scored the next three.
The
third goal, and ultimately the game-winner scored by Mark Kastelic,
his second of the night, was a perfect example of the struggles the
Blues have faced far too often.
First
off, the Bruins chip a puck into the Blues’ zone, and Tyler Tucker
gets beat to the goal line by Sean Kuraly. Now the scramble is on,
even as Dalibor Dvorsky gets to the puck, having to make a quick
decision, he softly banks it off the boards where Nikita Zadorov is
waiting to pick it off. Off the wall, the Bruins defenseman throws it
towards the goal, and the puck hits Kuraly, falls into the crease
where Kastelic beats Justin Faulk to the loose puck and swat it in at
8:01:
One,
you’d like to see Tucker win that race to the puck, and two, you
want Dvorsky to protect it a little better or make a better decision
instead of just loosely throwing a puck away knowing the point man is
there waiting to intercept it, and then you need to see bodies in and
around the net for better protection. All failed attempts.
“We've
got to win the goal line race,” Montgomery
said of Tucker.
“Puck's dumped in, they've got one forechecker, our second-quick
should have been there to be able to get that puck and get out of our
zone. They were changing, and they got out there and they got five
guys established and we never got possession again. They out-muscled
us at the net.”
Defenseman
Justin Faulk said, “the third goal changed momentum quite a bit.
Felt like a little bit of a drop after that and then they were able
to kind of take the momentum a little bit and add another one with
the fourth.”
*
Another struggling second period – The
Blues had a lead by doing a lot of decent things.
But
the second period for the most part outside of a good one Sunday
against the Montreal Canadiens, the Blues are a minus-14 in the
middle frame.
Make
it minus-16 after getting outscored 2-0 and a 1-0 lead turned into a
2-1 deficit thanks to the Bruins (18-13-0) maintaining possession in
the O-zone, the Blues scrambling and chasing for much of the period
and generating little to nothing in the offensive zone. They were
outshot 13-3.
“We
just couldn't get it by their trap in the neutral zone, couldn't set
up our forecheck and kind of get in with possession, chip it to a guy
with speed to kind of set it up,” Thomas
said.
“We
turned the puck over too much in the last 10 minutes of the first and
we talked about putting it to the goal line, needing to play a little
more in their end,” Montgomery said. “I think we were loose with
the puck and our angling of the puck was not where it needed to be,
so it gave them a lot of momentum going towards their net.”
*
Losing too many loose pucks, wall battles – It
was one of those games where if a puck was along the wall, the Bruins
were coming away with it. If there was a loose puck, the Bruins were
coming away with it. If there was a battle for it in the open ice,
the Bruins were coming away with it.
That
comes with working harder to get it and maintain possession, and in a
lot of cases, sustaining offensive zone time, and Boston was scoring
not the pretty goals but the greasy ones with traffic at the net and
even getting bounces to go their way.
It happened on Fraser Minten's first of two goals that tied the game 1-1 at 12:48 of the second:
It happened on Monten's second of the game at 11:33 of the third that made it 4-2 and for all intents and purposes, put the game away:
“In
both zones, to be honest, right,” Montgomery said. “Their
second-quick, which is the term we use, was quicker than ours.”
Why
is that the case in the 31st game of the season? Yes, off nights do
happen, but this team has little margin for error, and needing to put
a winning streak together. That’s not a way to get it done, because
a lot of the little things, including these, are what wins and loses
hockey games.
*
Bottom forwards struggled mightily – It’s
tough to blame and point fingers at some of the guys in the lineup,
but let’s face it, the Blues are a battered and bruised group right
now, and when guys like Fraser Minten and Kastelic are each scoring
two goals as some of the Bruins’ bottom six forwards who are also
used in their top six when needed, it left some of the bottom-tiered
guys open and vulnerable.
Aleksanteri
Kaskimaki, playing in just his fourth NHL game, played 10:35 and was
a minus-2; Dvorsky was a minus-1 in 12:13; Matt Luff, playing in just
his second NHL game in two years, was a minus-1 in just 7:44 of ice
time and he had a great chance to score early on an errant play that
could have gone well for St. Louis; Logan Mailloux was a minus-2 in
9:49; even veterans like Oskar Sundqvist was a minus-3, so was Dylan
Holloway; Brayden Schenn and Pius Suter each was a minus-2. But the
guys playing fewer minutes and lesser roles were taken advantage of
on this night and they had to be counted on even more when Nick
Bjugstad went down with an upper-body injury early in the second
period becoming the fifth forward in the last week-plus to be
sidelined:
“Obviously
it’s a team game as a whole,” Faulk said. “It’s not easy to
take guys in and out of the lineup that are kind of every day guys,
impact guys when we’re still trying to find our game a lot more
consistently. It’s tough, but for sure the guys that are coming in,
we’ve had to call up in our lineup are hungry and they’re going
to give their best effort and try and help the team as much as they
can. There’s definitely no lack of energy from the new guys, which
is always a good thing. We just have to find a way to keep it going
and find some continuity.”
*
Undermanned organizational depth showing – The
Blues are really being tested right now, both at the NHL level and
even at Springfield of the American Hockey League. Maybe some of
these call-ups aren’t ready for this kind of competition yet
outside of Luff, who’s been here often before, but now it looks
like Hugh McGing will be the latest to get into the lineup pending
Bjugstad’s status, and it didn’t look like his equipment was
going out to Centene Community Ice Center for Wednesday practice
ahead of a road game Thursday against the Nashville Predators.
*
Thomas, Buchnevich heating up, finding chemistry – The
bear in the room for a lot of the Blues’ struggles has been the
inability of the top-end guys to produce offensively.
Tuesday
was another example of if the Blues are to get out of the doldrums,
guys like Thomas and Buchnevich being on the same page and the
consistency of playing together produces the benefits will go a long
way.
Buchnevich
not has five points (two goals, three assists) in a four-game point
streak and Thomas has seven points (three goals, four assists) the
past eight games, including three points the past two games all
playing with Buchnevich.
The
two combined for the opening goal at 5:27 on the power play when
Thomas whipped a one-timer from the high slot past Jeremy Swayman on
a high-low play to make it 1-0:
And
Buchnevich made a heads-up play by intercepting Andrew Peeke behind
the net and feeding Thomas in the slot for the 2-2 goal at 4:51 of
the third:
“He’s
been playing great lately making everyone around him better,”
Thomas said of Buchnevich. “It’s not just one or two games. It’s
been five or 10 games he’s been playing real well. He’s picked a
lot of us up lately. He made two great plays and I was just able to
bury it, but he’s playing real well.”
*
Blues can’t string together three straight wins – Three tries,
three failed attempts for the Blues to win another game beyond two.
It
was Feb. 23-March 1 when the Blues won four in a row last year, their
first three-game winning streak that fueled their second-half run.
But that’s not something they can try and bank on all the time.
“It’s
a hard league and that’s what we strive for is that consistency so
you put yourself in that situation where the opportunity is there,”
Faulk said. “It didn’t go our way tonight and we’ve got to come
back and bounce back and try to put ourselves in that position again.
It starts with one and just keep it rolling. Obviously consistency’s
been a real big issue for us this year. I think overall our game’s
been getting better. We just got to keep pushing and keep grinding
and hope for the next one.”
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