The extra session has not been kind to the St. Louis Blues this season.
That trend continued on Tuesday.
William Nylander scored at 4:06 of overtime for the shorthanded Toronto Maple Leafs, who ended a five-game losing skid with a 3-2 win over the Blues at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Tuesday.
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Nathan Walker and Dalibor Dvorsky scored for the Blues (6-9-5), who have dropped four of their past five (1-1-3). Jordan Binnington stopped 26 shots.
The Blues began a five-game road trip on Tuesday and continue Thursday against the Philadelphia Flyers.
Let’s look at Tuesday’s observations:
* Terrible sequence for Blues to end a game, highlighted by a highly-skilled goal – The goal, quite frankly, should have never been available for Nylander to begin with.
John Tavares, who was at the end of, or beyond the end of, a long shift at 1:36, goes into the right corner and the Blues converge two skaters (Philip Broberg and Pavel Buchnevich), with Dylan Holloway behind the play waiting for one of his teammates to win the puck back to him for a potential final possession.
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Broberg’s shift was at 58 seconds but Buchnevich was the fresher of the players, having just stepped on for his third OT shift at 16 seconds. He comes in to really make sure they can win the puck back. But Tavares is able to kick it out to Morgan Rielly, who finds Nylander coming down the left hand side, he dangles around Holloway, who now has to scramble into position, then dangles around Binnington and tucks the puck inside the near post.
Game over:
The Blues had been pretty strong on wall battles in this game, but it’s been a lingering issue in this first quarter of the season and reared its ugly head once again to cost them another point in the extra time, falling to 0-3 in OT, 0-2 in shootouts.
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* Blues trying to play Buchnevich through his slumps is a problem – It’s no secret that Buchnevich is struggling and underperforming by a country mile.
We all know he has just three even-strength points (all assists) in 20 games now and just seven points (two goals, five assists) on the season. Unacceptable for an $8 million player.
But until this guy figures it out, if he figures it out, maybe it’s time in these situations for Jim Montgomery to give ice time, especially in overtime, to someone that deserves it.
Dvorsky is your future, how about him? Maybe a Pius Suter, who didn’t see the ice in OT? Maybe get Jimmy Snuggerud, also the future, back out there for another shift since he was on the bench at the 2:07 mark and rested.
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But Buchnevich had a blunder of a turnover that resulted in a penalty shot in a 4-3 OT loss to the Seattle Kraken on Nov. 8 and had a chance to win it in his previous shift when Broberg found him in the slot area, only to fumble the puck at his stick and nearly losing it again.
Buchnevich was on the ice for all three goals against (minus-3 for the game) and had one shot attempt in the game (blocked), took an undisciplined penalty in the first period that didn’t cost them a goal but it came not long after in 17:19 of ice time.
He did make a good play to help with Dvorsky’s power-play goal, but the miscues and mistakes are glaring for someone who’s supposed to be a top-end player.
* Fourth line creates a break, momentum – The fourth line of Walker, Oskar Sundqvist and Alexey Toropchenko did what they are supposed to do: create momentum and hard, gritty, grinding shifts.
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They did that and opened the scoring with what was the tone-setter for their game when Walker – or should I say Nylander – made it 1-0 for the Blues when the Toronto forward inadvertently batted the puck past Dardene Prairie’s Joseph Woll at 1:50 of the first period for a 1-0 lead. But it came after initial pressure below the goal line that helped fuel the fire in that situation:
So think about this: Walker scored a goal but didn’t have a shot on goal in the game. Pretty rare but it happens on those proverbial own goals.
* Breakdown on tying goal in first starts with undisciplined penalty – The Blues had some good mojo going, but Buchnevich takes an ill-advised offensive zone holding minor at 3:25, and although the Blues killed the play off, Jake McCabe tied the game 1-1 at 5:36 on a floater from the left point.
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The Blues had a chance to clear the puck, but Justin Faulk, playing in his 1,000th game, failed to get the clear, and after McCabe’s initial shot was blocked in the slot, the puck hopped over Brayden Schenn’s stick, who thought he was going with it out of the zone, McCabe used former Blue Dakota Joshua as a screen to knuckle one into the corner:
* Special teams create life, Blues turn up shot volume from moment of tying goal – It started with a solid penalty kill for the game, going 3-for-3, including killing off Tyler Tucker’s double minor for high-sticking in the first period after his partner Matthew Kessel, who had a tough first, got walked by Max Domi.
And the power play came through when Dvorsky’s one-timer from the right circle at 13:18 of the second period tied it 2-2.
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Buchnevich kept a play alive with a diving effort to keep the play alive, the Blues were able to reload the play from low to high, work it around to Robert Thomas, who found Dvorsky with a seam pass with a Toronto forward missing his stick because it was broken, and Dvorsky made no mistake with his third goal – all on the power play – of the season:
* Blues found life after looking somewhat lifeless – The Maple Leafs were missing some key components (Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies, Chris Tanev) and others in this game, and the Blues at one point were being outshot 20-7 to a cast that would have resembled half of the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League.
But by getting that initial power play, created by Walker’s hustle to draw a tripping minor on McCabe at 12:06, the Blues then caught some life with 16 of the next 18 shots in the game and creating much more O-zone time. They just couldn’t find that next goal despite a plethora of opportunities.
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Jordan Kyrou was part of a lot of those opportunities, and the Blues’ winger finished with six shots on goal on 12 attempts; you had to think a goal was coming but it never did.
* Missed too many nets – The Blues simply missed the net too many times, 18 of them in all.
Scoring chances were aplenty in the game, but six guys missed the net two or more times in the game, and that’s just too many in a one-shot game.
Kyrou had the best chance I could recall in the third period when he came in walking into the inner edge of the left circle and tried picking the top right corner but missed the net. That was the chance to win the game but there were others, including Buchnevich’s overtime chance.
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