MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- Jordan Kyrou feels the goals will come.
The St. Louis Blues forward is as frustrated as anyone at not only his lack of goal scoring but the entire team.
The Blues (3-3-1) have scored the second-fewest goals in the NHL in the first month of the season (13); only the 0-8-1 San Jose Sharks have fewer (nine).
Kyrou, who led the Blues with 37 goals last season, has just one through seven games (three points); only Brandon Saad (two) has more than one goal this season of any Blues player.
But it's not for a lack of chances. Maybe the advanced metrics don't necessarily tell the whole story -- they never do -- but Kyrou has had through seven games, 17 scoring chances, including three breakaways that he's failed to produce on. He is on pace for 82 high danger corsi-for chances, which would be his best by far (56 last season) and has seven of them through seven games, that just speaks to the volume of chances he's seen in the early going that's indicative of the Blues' scoring as a whole thus far.
"Yeah I've had a ton of chances," Kyrou said. "Even if half of them go in, I could have a ton of more goals right now.
"You just want to try and stay positive. It's happened to me before. Just got to try and stay positive, and the good thing is I'm getting a bunch of chances and eventually they're going to start going in, right?"
The Blues hope so, starting with Wednesday in Colorado against the Avalanche. But Kyrou is right, he started last season off with just one goal in six games and three in his first 11 before he slowly started to take off.
Perhaps the added responsibilities of puck retrievals, being more mindful on the defensive end and having the puck more on his stick has led to the increased chances.
"He's working. He's tracking and working," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "He's putting himself, getting back into the play without the puck and helping out tracking, breaking plays up and back in position. He's done a pretty good job of it."
Kyrou leads the Blues with 23 shots on goal, which isn't a lot considering the Blues are 31st in the league in shots on goal (24.7), just ahead of the Sharks (24.6), but after taking criticism for his lack of play without the puck and turnovers in inopportune places a season ago, the 25-year-old has taken steps to rectify those areas that he hopes leads to better offensive.
"That's one thing I've really tried focusing on this year is my overall game, backchecking, breaking up plays and just having good sticks in the d-zone," Kyrou said. "I think I've been doing that. I've been getting chances from that, right? That's how you do get a lot of offense is if I'm getting back. Just continue to do that and hoping we can just try to continue to build and they're going to start going in for us. Just got to keep at it."
