ST. LOUIS – Another one that got away.
How many times have we said that about the St. Louis Blues this season?
This time, it came in the form of a pair of two-goal leads.
The Blues got a point, but it felt like losing another one despite getting a big offensive night, only to lose 6-5 in a shootout against the Philadelphia Flyers at Enterprise Center on Friday.
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Robert Thomas, Jimmy Snuggerud and Jordan Kyrou each had a goal and an assist, while Jordan Binnington made 26 saves. But the Blues blew two two-goal leads, 3-1 in the second period and 5-3 in the third period to fall to 6-8-4 (16 points) and a date with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Let’s look at Friday’s game observations:
* Blowing a pair of two-goal leads – The Blues had this game in hand multiple times.
They had a goalie (Sam Ersson) on the ropes, allowing five goals on 17 shots (.706 save percentage).
When they took command with a 3-1 lead on goals by Snuggerud at 9:42 of the first period, then Justin Faulk at 6:54 of the second period (on a Cam Fowler assist, his 500th NHL point), that’s when the mistakes started:
The response wasn’t good.
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Cam Fowler, who had two assists in the game and reached 500 points in the NHL, lost coverage at the net when Christian Dvorak popped in and backhanded in a rebound 23 seconds after the Faulk goal, it’s a one-goal game again:
And when Trevor Zegras was parked at the net front and tied the game at 18:24, it opened got the Flyers back on level ground, and it came after Pavel Buchnevich (we’ll get to him later) missed a great chance to make it a 4-2 game moments earlier, then Colton Parayko was beaten to the wall by Owen Tippett as the puck was then at the blue line, and a shot got to the net for the tip past Binnington:
But the Blues regained the advantage in the third period, when coach Jim Montgomery moved Brayden Schenn back between Dylan Holloway and Kyrou, a line that carried the Blues on their shoulders in the second half of last season, and Holloway’s third in three games made it 4-3 just 40 seconds into the final period:
And when Thomas scored on a one-timer from the slot, off a pretty feed from Snuggerud, at 4:56 of the third, the Blues were up 5-3 and should have had that game under control:
But again, they didn’t.
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Dvorak scored at 7:53 to make it 5-4 after Matthew Kessel slipped to the ice trying to turn and move up with the puck, creating a turnover and shot from the slot:
And when Tippett tied it 5-5 at 10:27, it marked a plethora of errors, including at the end, Mathieu Joseph vacating the high slot where Tippett was, and ultimately, three Blues wound up screening Binnington on the shot:
“Quite high to be honest,” Montgomery said when asked of the level of disappointment and frustration blowing two two-goal leads. “I didn’t like that we gave up the first two-goal lead. Those were some net front miscues and then the last two goals were guys not owning their quadrants or turnovers. Regardless, we scored five goals. You’ve got to win that game. There’s got to be more desperation in us.”
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* All possession in OT, no shots at the net – The Blues, unlike their 4-3 loss to the Seattle Kraken last Saturday in overtime, had majority of the puck in the extra session, but they cycled it out on multiple occasions and really never generated the kind of chances that would quantify winning.
They had a couple looks, and Fowler had one great opportunity from the inner edge of the left circle that was stopped, and Snuggerud had a puck roll off his stick with some pressure from behind cutting to the net from the left side.
“There’s a lot of speed. It’s a fast game,” Snuggerud said. “I thought we had good chances and in overtime.”
What has to be most peculiar is that even with all the possession, how do the Blues allow the Flyers to make TWO changes to get fresh guys on the ice when they have possession?
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That was a big issue and can’t happen.
Players failing to recognize the odd-man chance when players are changing was puzzling.
“We’ve had a lot of success. Coach (Steve) Ott has done a real good job and it’s worked a lot in past years of building, taking it back out of you don’t like your entry,” Montgomery said. ‘I think we were a little impatient. I think we could have hit the last time Thomas got it. I forget who had the puck, they stopped, they hit him coming late and that led to a good opportunity. I think it was 21’s opportunity when he skated in, which I thought were in on the hands or he might have scored. But we’re not having the same purpose of attacking inside the dots.
“We don’t put teams on their heels in those situations. Twice they changed, and the guy with the puck didn’t see it and he didn’t bypass them so we could have a 3-on-2. I think that was the bigger mistake that we made, the natural execution on the 3-on-3. They changed when we took it out and we let them change. It was still 3-on-3. You’ve got to see it, you’ve got to go.”
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“We didn’t do a good enough job keeping them in three-quarter,” Thomas said. “We let them change twice even though we had the possession. We’ve got to be a lot smarter there (and) set up the next guys. If you have the puck, they should never be able to change. Your guys should be able to change at least once, maybe even twice, get them tired and take advantage of it.”
And despite the difference in possession in OT, the Flyers somehow still managed to outshoot the Blues 6-1.
* Top guys produced – The Blues need their top end players to make plays, and to score.
They got seven points (four goals, three assists) from Thomas, Kyrou, Snuggerud and Holloway. They generated enough, despite the low volume of shots on goal (47 attempts), from their top end guys.
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Kyrou made a savvy read picking off a Zegras pass in the neutral zone and darting in along the right side before beating Ersson from the right dot for a 1-0 lead at 1:19 of the opening period:
“Yeah, but at the end of the day, you need everyone to win,” Snuggerud said. “Not saying we were top heavy or bottom heavy today. Everyone in the lineup needs to be at their best if we want to win games. I thought we had chances as every line. We just have to bear down at the end of the game.
“… As the games go on, more and more games, I feel like you build more and more chemistry. As a team, I feel like that’s what we’re really most worried about right now keeping our energy up throughout the whole game and bearing down and finishing with a win.
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“… Any time you score five goals in a game you should be happy because we were creating offense, but on the flip side defensively, I feel like you don’t want to give up that much as well. It’s living and learning and we have to keep moving forward.”
“Yeah, we had some chances,” Thomas said. “We’ve still go to get better.”
* Blues blowing points in OT, SO – Four games, four losses for the Blues in overtime and the shootout.
That’s four points banked, but the potential of an extra point left on the table in those four games.
“Those are big extra points,” Thomas said. ‘We’ve got to find a way to get those done, especially in overtime. We’ve got to bear down and get those in the net and if it comes to shootout, we have our spots, we have our stuff we need to do. We just didn’t hit them there.”
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* Buchnevich turnover, ensuing penalty shot – Pavel Buchnevich nearly cost the Blues the extra point in overtime after losing a puck, turning it over that would have resulted in a Zegras breakaway. But the Blues forward was able to trip Zegras from behind at 2:51 of OT, awarding the Flyers forward a penalty shot.
Binnington would make the save when Zegras tried beating him five-hole. It prolonged the game, but it came after another lengthy possession for the Blues.
“I think he had to,” Montgomery said of Buchnevich. “It’s the same situation that would occur, but usually when a forward doesn’t have too much time to think, he’s going to trust his instincts. You understand why he did it. To me, the turnover’s the issue. Not what happens next.”
Also an issue, Buchnevich is not producing offensively at all. Nothing.
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He was a plus-1 but had just one shot on goal and two missed nets in 18:40. It’s the 11th time in 18 games Buchnevich has produced zero points.
* Skinner’s debut – Defenseman Hunter Skinner got the traditional rookie lap at the start of warmups, a dream-come-true playing in his first NHL game:
And it wasn’t a knock-your-socks-off game for the 24-year-old, but he managed his ice time (10:45) well with four hits and was a plus-1 in the game.
“I thought he was aggressive,” Montgomery said. ‘He was fine, but my brain’s more on how we give up two two-goal leads.”
* Dvorak line torched Blues – Dvorak (two goals, one assist), Tippett (one goal, three assists) and Zegras (two goals, one assist, shootout winner) combined for 10 points in the game and were all the offense the Flyers needed.
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They were allowed to have their way throughout the game, and it wasn’t even the line that Montgomery said the Blues focused on as much because he was playing Thomas’ line against the line of Matvei Michkov, Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny.
“For whatever reason, their second line gave us fits,” Montgomery said. “I was matching Thomas against Couturier’s line. That’s their top line. And their second line gave us fits defensively.”
* Schenn rejoins familiar linemates – At the start of the third, Montgomery reunited Brayden Schenn with Holloway and Kyrou, and it paid dividends.
It set the tone for what the Blues were hoping would be a win when Kyrou set up Holloway for a left-circle shot to give the Blues a 4-3 lead just 40 seconds into the final period:
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“Yeah, and it paid off with that fourth goal,” Montgomery said. “Sometimes you’re going to have games where you’re not on. I thought Schenn was skating so I moved him up and I dropped (Dalibor) Dvorsky back on the third line at left wing.”
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