ST.
LOUIS – If
that wasn’t rock bottom, the ocean floor sure has got to feel
close.
The
St. Louis Blues are
a mess, and unlike Friday’s 6-5 shootout loss to the Philadelphia
Flyers, this one was never in doubt.
The
Vegas Golden Knights were not about to feel sorry for a Blues side
that played the night before and it showed early.
Former
Blue Brandon Saad scored his first of the season, Braeden Bowman
scored his first NHL goal and the Golden Knights cruised to a 4-1 win
over the Blues at Enterprise Center on Saturday.
Philip
Broberg scored the Blues’ lone goal late in the third period:
Despite
earning points in their past four games (2-0-2) and going 3-1-2 the
past six, the Blues (6-9-4) fell into a sinkhole on Saturday in front
of another full house.
But
it’s obvious something needs to change with this group, and it
needs to change fast.
“Ultimately
it’s cliché and it’s easy to say, just put in the work and keep
grinding because besides maybe family and your friends, I don’t
think anyone really feels sorry for us in this league,” Blues
defenseman Justin Faulk said.
“As a group, individually, the game moves on. It’s not going to
wait for us to sit here and find our game. We have to continue to put
the work in and mentally prepare and kind of … I hate say accept
where we’re at but know where we’re at and we have to continue to
grind to go up. It’s hard. This game is … some people say it’s
very fair. No one’s going to take a night off. Throughout the
league, teams are going to come in every night and make it hard and
that’s guys’ jobs. Guys are fighting for their jobs every night
and ultimately, you have to just continue to grind and put the work
in because it’s evolving and it’s going to continue on and that’s
the only way to put a stop to it.”
Let’s
look at Saturday’s game observations:
*
Blues had early life, then a turnover started spiral – Believe
it or not, the Blues actually had some bite to their game early.
There was a 2-on-1 with Alexey Toropchenko and Nathan Walker that
Toropchenko kept but was stopped by Akira Schmid.
The
Blues had an 8-4 advantage in shots, with multiple attempts in close
at the net. But then came a Matthew Kessel giveaway exiting the zone
– stop me if you’ve heard this before – and a turnover ensued,
and seconds later, the puck is in the back of the net.
Kessel
looked like he was trying to hit Dylan Holloway but missed the mark.
Holloway wasn’t initially looking for the puck and when he turned,
it was so far off the mark, Vegas intercepted it, and Saad, who had
gone 16 games to begin the season without a goal, whipped one in past
Joel Hofer from the slot to make it 1-0 at 12:52 of the first period:
Then
after a Nick Bjugstad tripping penalty, Bowman slammed home a pass
from Pavel Dorofeyev on the doorstep at 14:58 and it was 2-0, the
wheels were coming off and for a team lacking confidence, any kind of
fightback was going to be tough:
*
Start to second final death knell – Like the start to the game,
Blues coach Jim Montgomery had the Blues’ fourth line (Toropchenko,
Oskar Sundqvist and Nathan Walker) and third defensive pair (Kessel
and Tyler Tucker) on the ice to begin a period to provide a boost and
some energy.
But
just like the opening shift to the game, that five-man unit for
hemmed in, and Noah Hanifin’s long-range shot from neat the blue
line found its way past Hofer 36 seconds into the period and a 3-0
lead:
And
it was game over.
“Earlier
than we wanted to, probably the start of the second,” Faulk
said when the game got away.
“They came out, got an early goal. The life on the bench and the
group definitely, to be honest, there wasn’t a ton. It kind of got
drained after that. Ultimately, kind of played the rest of the game
on auto pilot, it seemed.”
Ouch.
That’s not a good sign. Sort of like a sign of a team that is
sorely lacking confidence.
“I
don’t think it’s high,” Montgomery
said.
“And it shouldn’t be because we haven’t earned the right to
have confidence because we’re not playing with enough desperation
and with enough urgency. And we need to correct that and we will.
“I
don’t agree with (Faulk’s
auto pilot assessment).
I think we got flat and that’s where we need to have more from our
group. There needs to be a better response. I don’t like the start
of our second period, but that’s been most of the season. But I did
think around the 10-minute mark, we started to play better hockey. We
were more connected, we were more physical, the penalty kill was
good. We killed that (four-minute Walker high-stick at
the end of the second)
off. And then we got flat again. We need to be better. To a man, we
need to have more desperation.”
Blues
captain Brayden Schenn added, “A
minute into the second, just in general, we have to do a better job
with life energy and coming to the rink and be excited to be here,
play for this team, play for each other and the organization and
stuff. Confidence is probably a low one on a lot of guys. But at the
end of the day, you have to fight your way through it.”
*
Blues
go nearly entire period without a shot on goal – The moment Pius
Suter put a close range rebound into the pads of Schmid with 10:51
left in the first, it was their eighth shot on goal. Little did
anyone know at the time that it would be their last shot for the next
18:36 when Sundqvist, from the left wall, throws a harmless shot at
Schmid at the 7:15 mark of the second period.
The
Blues had no push, they had no jam, they had no connectivity that was
even a hint of a threat in the offensive zone.
Meanwhile,
Vegas was busy with the next 15 shots on goal and three goals between
Blues shots.
The
Blues were chasing the puck, it seemed, the entire time.
“Yeah,
I thought we were doing a lot of staring and watching and not enough
trying to make plays or kill plays,” Montgomery
said.
“We’re
not hard enough probably on both ends, not killing plays in the
D-zone first and foremost,” Faulk
said.
“Probably spending a little too much time letting teams hemming us
in three-quarters ice and then at that point you don’t have
anything for a forecheck. On the flip side, when we do have some
juice for a forecheck, it seems we’re pretty light. We’re not
hemming them in and if we are, we’re perimeter. We’re not taking
chances getting shots to the net or crashing the net or making it
hard on the inside. That same style works on both ends of the ice and
right now, it’s a struggle for us.”
The
Blues saw the Flyers do it to them twice(!) in one game on Friday,
overcoming a pair of two-goal deficits. Right now, this team has no
fight back in it whatsoever.
“No,
I don’t think, I didn’t want to use the word ‘acceptance,’”
Faulk
said.
“I don’t think guys are accepting of the fact where we’re at
and are just going to roll over and say that’s OK. We know it’s
not acceptable, the standards of this organization. The
responsibility we’ve been given to uphold it, we have to be better,
we have to grind. Guys know that. Guys are coming to the rink working
every day in practice. It’s not like we’re going through the
motions there or anything like that. I think guys have had a pretty
good attitude with practice and knowing that’s the time to get
better. You’ve got to do it and you’ve got to show up and do
what’s asked of you.
“It’s
hard to say that where we are in the standings,” Schenn
said.
“Guys care. Guys show up like they’re going to work hard. Right
now we’re not getting the results. Obviously confidence is shaken.
At the end of the day, we have to find a way to grind through it as a
team. I don’t believe at all we don’t come to the rink to work
hard. I just think we’re off in a lot of areas, which probably
makes us look slower or not as connected as we need to be.”
*
Time
to do something else – The third period was also a microcosm of
what
the Blues are lacking as far as pushback is concerned, because Vegas
(8-4-5) played like a team wanting to win, and not like one playing
to lose.
Even
with a 3-0 lead, the Golden Knights stayed on their toes and
attacked, not allowing the Blues to even resemble a pushback.
Another
misplayed puck at the offensive zone blue line, this one by Dylan
Holloway, allowed Tomas Hertl to score on a breakaway at 11:20 to
cement Vegas’ win:
But
no matter what the Blues are currently doing, whether it’s the
systems or style of play, it isn’t working.
“All
I know in life is you work,” Montgomery
said.
‘You work and you watch film and you talk to your staff, you talk
to your managers, you talk to your leaders and you keep working
together, and you come up with solutions.
“We
might need to change the way we play in certain areas. We tried
redefining and making sure that our habits and details are really
good and after a while, the definition of insanity is trying to keep
doing the same thing and not getting good results, so we might need
to try different things.”
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