ST. LOUIS -- Sometimes, you don't ask how.
But it bears asking anyway: how did the St. Louis Blues win on Thursday, a 2-1 victory against the Arizona Coyotes at Enterprise Center?
Especially when they went 0-for-7 on the power play, allow another power play goal and the fans boo your specialty teams off the ice when they wasted a full two-minute 5-on-3 man advantage.
But in the end, the Blues (6-5-1) were able to close out a 3-1-0 homestand despite giving themselves no chance with their power play.
But the Blues found a way against a team that had just mopped the floor with them in this very same building on Oct. 19 (6-2) and one that's given them fits in recent memory.
The Blues won the 5-on-5 game 2-0, Joel Hofer improved to 3-0-0 with a 1.34 goals-against average and .950 save percentage in his past three starts with a 19-save performance, and the defense locked the game down when penalties weren't handed out like Halloween candy, especially to the Coyotes.
With that in mind, let's dive right into the three-period takeaways:
* First Period -- It was the kind of start the Blues craved early, getting a 1-0 lead on Oskar Sundqvist's fortuitous goal, thanks to referee Pierre Lambert.
Jakub Vrana's pass from behind the net to Sammy Blais made Lambert trip over the puck, and the official took out rookie Logan Cooley in the process allowing Blais to get the puck to the net, and Sundqvist cleaned up the loose change in the crease.
This is when the game took some crazy turns, and who in the heck poked Liam O'Brien in the wrong spot?
The Coyotes forward put his team in an precarious position early by taking the dumbest of penalties after Blais put a shoulder check on him along the boards, and for whatever reason, O'Brien was set off and he went after the Blues forward and was called for cross-checking and roughing at 9:07, giving the Blues a four-minute power play. And when Matt Dumba boarded Jordan Kyrou nine seconds later, it was a full two minutes of 5-on-3.
But what happened next was, needless to say, not good.
The Blues came out of all that with just two shots on goal, they looked discombobulated all throughout their continuing failed power play with poor passes, hesitancy, missed passes, poor zone entries, you name it, it was on full display.
"What did you guys see," Berube asked. "Five-on-three: execution, and just not moving it quick enough and execution with the puck. Right now, it's a struggle. They're not seeing it, they're not very confident."
"What I saw, which was a bad thing tonight, but generally not, we just saw guys that wanted to be the guy," Blues defenseman Torey Krug said. "Over-handle, not executing with the puck and not taking that extra second to make a good pass. I was at fault for that one time. It's up to that group, obviously important players for our team. You've got to execute in those situations and we didn't."
What typically comes after so many failed attempts? A penalty of their own, and when Robert Thomas was called for hooking at 14:19, the writing was on the wall for Arizona to tie it.
They did, on Lawson Crouse's goal at 15:44 to tie the game 1-1. It happened after the Blues had a shorthanded chance, and when Kasperi Kapanen's shot from the inner right circle was several feet wide, it allowed the Coyotes to transition back up ice, and when local boy Clayton Keller patiently waited for Crouse to come off the bench and wire a wrister from the top of the right circle short side, it beat Hofer for the lone time.
That's when the wheels could have come off.
"Killing that gave them a lot of energy and they got their push, but I thought we did a good job of responding and not getting overwhelmed when things weren't going our way," Blues defenseman Torey Krug said. "That's the sign of a team that's growing up a little bit. We've got to continue that. There's always that next play to be made, there's always going to be another power play when you do make those mistakes. We've got to continue with that."
The Blues got their fourth power play chance with 2:03 left when Josh Brown was called for slashing, but another chance came and went, and the period ended 1-1 and a 15-3 edge in shots.
* Second Period -- Arizona settled in a bit, but red-hot Thomas scored in his fifth straight game, when he made it 2-1 at the 6:00 mark, finishing off a rally nice sauce feed from Pavel Buchnevich.
"Buchy's been making a ton of great plays," Thomas said. "Obviously a great pass. We could have got a couple more tonight. Great play by him."
And then came another penalty, and another, and another. One at 6:57 for too many men, then Brown went to the box again at 10:39 for interference, and Jason Zucker hooked Kevin Hayes on a drive to the net at 15:30, all came and went with nothing to show and drop the Blues to 1-for-35 on the season, by far a league-low 2.9 percent.
"I think just more desperation around the net," defenseman Torey Krug when asked what needs to happen on the power play. "We get some shots, we get some looks, a lot of one-and-done's, but it's not rocket science, outnumber them at the net, shoot for rebounds and at times, if you over-handle the puck and you're always looking for a better play, then the shots aren't even going to be there and you can't outnumber them at the net. More direct."
Shots were 27-10 in favor of the Blues, but leaving the Coyotes around was not in the cards.
* Third Period -- There was a sense that either the Blues were going to have to kill some penalties themselves or the Coyotes were going to make a push.
Well, how about both?
A Colton Parayko minor for hooking 1:03 into the period put the Blues in a challenge, but it was one they wiggled out of and finished the game 1-for-2 on the PK.
And Hofer would have to be called into action. Ten of his 19 saves came in the third and none were bigger than one on Nick Schmaltz from the slot with roughly 13:35 remaining.
"He was great," Thomas said of Hofer. "A couple times where we made some mistakes and he stood on his head and made the saves we needed him to make. Great job from him."
Arizona had some good, sustained zone time when the Coyotes pulled Karel Vejmelka late, but the Blues blocked shots, blocked passes, blocked shooting lanes and Hofer swallowed up the shots he saw to preserve a much-needed win despite the special teams troubles.
"Obviously you want to be better (on the power play), you want to help the team out, but at the end of the day, it's a big win," Thomas said. "Those guys have had our number lately, especially coming in here. I think we did a great job of limiting their offense, playing a smart game, especially in the third period."
