The St. Louis Blues are having a tough time winning hockey games and will likely fall further down in the standings if they keep up this run. They have a record of 3-6-1 through their last 10 games. With a significant 8-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Nov. 9, their second game where they allowed eight goals this season, the Blues only show signs of worsening. However, for the benefit of the doubt, I will say they have also been dealing with many injuries to key players that have hurt them badly in crucial areas of their lineup. Regardless, three things hold that the Blues are doing wrong.
Not Scoring Enough and Allowing Too Many Goals
In the NHL, the best teams score more goals than they allow by having a good balance of defense and offense. Right now, the Blues don’t have either of those, and it isn’t terrific to look at when you see how deep they are in the league in both goals against and goals for. The Blues rank 27th in the league in goals (43), which is terrible for a team that loaded up in the offseason with some much-needed goal-scoring depth. On top of that, the Blues also have the seventh-worst goals-against totals (59) in the NHL so far, and I’d imagine it would be a lot worse if they didn’t have Jordan Binnington or Joel Hofer as their goaltenders.
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This problem is tough to tackle because they don’t have many trading options and can’t afford to do that now. The only goal is to hope that their team, as it is right now, can play through this performance drought for the next three or four weeks until their top guys on the injured reserve (IR) slowly recover and come back into the lineup. Recently, Pierre-Olivier Joseph was lost from their lineup for an expected two games.
Also, with Dylan Holloway recovering from his scary shot to the neck with a puck and Matthew Joseph fully returning after suffering a lower-body injury on Oct. 26, things are slowly coming back together. Had they not overprepared with lots of depth in the off-season, this would’ve been a different outcome. However, the Blues’ prime performers, Jordan Kyrou, Pavel Buchnevich, Colton Parayko, and Justin Faulk, still have more work to do as the only remaining healthy superstars on the roster.
Goaltending Being Hung Out to Dry
The Blues goaltending tandem of Binnington and Hofer should’ve been one of the best in the league this season and started well. However, that is not the case right now. With Binnington losing three of his last five starts and putting up a .886 save percentage (SV%) and a 3.31 goals-against average (GAA) this season, he is not like himself. In the last five games, he put up a .873 SV% and a 3.80 GAA, which shows he is under much pressure.
For Binnington, I don’t think it is a goaltending issue, and it seems more like a defensive issue, as that is the position they’ve been complicated with the most with injuries. The Blues also allow an average of 30.5 shots per game, the ninth-highest in the league. To add insult to injury, the Blues play him much more as he’s started 12 out of the Blues’ 16 games this season, and at this point, I would not be surprised if he experiences a lot of burnout from facing close to 30 shots a game.
As for backup Hofer, his performance is somewhat mediocre. He started great in his first three games this season, earning a shutout in one of those three games, but somehow, he was not getting the starts after his third win in a row. He later lost his last two games after not being started since Oct. 19, and his performance quickly dropped to a record of 3-2-0 with a .903 SV%, a 3.33 GAA, and a shutout in his last five games.
This could also be a sign that Binnington may also need a new team where he has more defensive stability and can take less of the load. It’s not right that he has to right now, especially since the Blues’ goaltending is pretty good between him and Hofer, and I think they get a solid backup for Hofer in return if they offer up Binnington.
Blues Own One of the Worst Special Teams in the League
Excellent special teams are crucial to winning hockey games, meaning either the penalty kill or power play has to be sharp; however, the Blues’ special teams have been horrible. They rank 23rd in the league on the penalty kill (77.1 percent), and the power play ranks 27th (14.6 percent). They are also without two of their top three penalty-killers from last season, with Nick Leddy and Robert Thomas injured and most of the penalty-killing pressure on Ryan Suter, Faulk, and Parayko, which is not the right way to go since Faulk had the sixth most penalty-killing minutes last season (91:34 minutes). Suter has been a sixth or seventh option on the penalty kill in the previous three seasons he’s played with the Dallas Stars.
Playing Suter as one of the top penalty-killers is also not the best idea, considering he’s 39 years old and is on the point of decline in terms of physicality. I can give the Blues the benefit of the doubt here since no one expected this many injuries to happen as quickly as they did, which is why they are where they are.
As for the power play, it has also been tough to watch some of their best players on the power play from last season, like Jake Neighbours, struggle to find the back of the net while playing first power-play unit minutes. It could be because they are without Thomas, but they must also mix up the lines more in situations like this.
Instead, the Blues should try Neighbours on their second power-play unit. While Alexandre Texier is not a top performer on the power play, he is worth trying in Neighbours’ place. The Blues must try new things to stay alive and fight in games.
What the Blues Need to Fix Immediately
The Blues’ first need is their ability to score more than they allow. Special teams can also address this, as they play a decisive factor in their performance on both defense and offense. That said, trying new line combinations and seeing what works best for them right now and not pushing through the old way is going to give them an idea of how to deal with these things in the future, especially for a reasonably new NHL coach like Drew Bannister. If the Blues do those exact things, I could see some good outcomes to their performance.
