Home Cooking for the Blues in January

My hockey club has been playing extremely well as of late. The Blues are just one point back of the Chicago Blackhawks for the lead in the Central Division. The Colorado Avalanche went into Chicago last night and left with a 4-0 win. Hopefully, they come into St. Louis tired and the Blues can use their one day off to spur them past the Avs and into the top spot in the Central and maintain pace with the Vanouver Canucks for the top spot in the conference, as the Canucks are leading late in the third period in Boston. The Blues's dramatic comeback on Thursday night against the Edmonton Oilers showed the heart that this team has. They spent virtually half of the second period shorthanded, getting completely hosed by the referees with bad penalties going against the Blues and obvious calls not being whistled on Edmonton. Getting the first power play goal after a quick delay of game penalty in the third was huge. TJ Oshie completely running one of the Oilers and not retaliating when they cheap-shotted him for making a clean hit was even bigger. The Blues went back to work on the power play, tied the game, and they just kept the momentum from that point on in the third. Matt D'Agostini wristed a laser past Devan Dubnyk to put the Blues back in front and they held on from there.

With the Blues playing nine home games in January and just two on the road, they have a terrific opportunity to separate themselves from some of the lower teams in the conference and perhaps build a bit of a lead on Detroit and Chicago. The Blues' home record is an outstanding 16-3-2, which ranks tops in the NHL for home wins. Winning the division would be a huge advantage, as the winner will likely get the top seed and the two runners up could face each other in the first round as the four and five seeds. Not only will that knock out one of the better teams in the conference early, but that will be a tough, tiring series that could lead to the winner being too beat up to make much noise beyond that round. This month is critical with all of the road games that the Blues have to play in March. They must position themselves well now so that they can withstand a possible slump later, as I hold the same thoughts as team president John Davidson. "I don't want to make the playoffs, I want to win the playoffs."

Blue Streak

The Blues are currently enduring the downswing of a season long trend. St. Louis has gone all year without a streak, either winning or losing, stopping at just one game.

The opened the season with consecutive wins over the Flyers and Ducks. The Blues went on to lose three straight, all on the road, to Chicago, Nashville, and Dallas. This pattern has remained consistent throughout the season right up to their last game of November, which is tomorrow night in Chicago. Now that the Blues have lost two straight, there's no telling what tomorrow's outcome will be. But if they beat Chicago and you like to put money down on trends, betting on the Blues to knock off the Capitals when they return on home on Wednesday night is your kind of bet.

There are two much more telling and disturbing trends that are currently plaguing the Blues. First, only the Predators rank worse offensively than the Blues. The team was getting scoring from David Perron before he went out with a concussion. And although T.J. Oshie had scored just one goal before breaking his ankle, he had chipped in nine assists to the Blues' scoring cause. Another factor that isn't measured on the scoresheet, is how Oshie is one of the team's best forecheckers and how he can create offense with his hitting in addition to his constant pursuit of the puck. With those two players out, the St. Louis has needed to find other sources for scoring. To an extent, they have. Andy McDonald and Brad Boyes have both come alive on the scoring front. Boyes had a four-game goal-scoring streak in recent weeks and McDonalds had three goals and a shootout goal between last Wednesday's and Friday's games. Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is having a very strong year in his first full NHL season and is leading not just the team's blue-liners, but the entire team in assists. Unfortunately, that's about where the bright spots end for the Blues' scoring. David Backes has been fairly quiet all season. Patrik Berglund has looked brilliant at moments, but still hasn't developed into the consistent scorer that the team had hoped for when they drafted him in the first round. Matt D'Agostini, who was on fire to begin the season, has been stuck at six goals for quite some time.

The secondary scoring also hasn't been there for St. Louis. Alex Steen, who got a lucrative extension over the offseason, hasn't been producing lately as he's failed to register a point in six consecutive games. Jay McClement has only scored in one game all season. Sure, in that game, he scored three goals, but he needs to contribute more as well, especially since we know he has the talent to do so after his hat trick against Atlanta and in addition to him putting up 29 points last season. He currently only has one assist for a total of four points, which has him on pace for just under 15 points by the end of the season. Everyone on the offense can improve and must if the Blues are going to stay in the thick of things until Perron and Oshie can return. Jaroslav Halak is a fantastic goaltender, but he can't post a shutout in a third of the team's games like he did over the first nine. Expecting that would simply be both unrealistic and unfair to Halak.

The other trend that the Blues much change and quickly, is the fact that they continue to blow leads late in games. It was an issue earlier this season when they coughed up a couple of late leads, including a two-goal advantage in Chicago with just seven minutes remaining in regulation. The Blues ended up losing that one in overtime, but they then followed that up with their seven-game winning streak. The Blues blew third period leads in back-to-back games with Dallas over the weekend, reprising the pattern from earlier this season. I'm not asking them to roll off another seven-game winning streak, but they can't go back to their old ways of blowing leads like they did all of last season. Not being able to close out games is the primary reason that the Blues missed the postseason a year ago and if the team goes back to that mentality, where they play not to lose, it will have similar results this season.

Photo by John Grieshop