ST. LOUIS -- There comes a time when the better team doesn't win.
It happens, and on one of the rare occasions this season for the St. Louis Blues, it happened to them.
In the grand scheme of things, they were the better team than the Colorado Avalanche, and that's why not coming away with at least a point in their 2-1 loss at Enterprise Center on Friday hurts.
The Blues (18-16-1) were better in a number of areas, they did so many good things, from containing the potent top line of the Avalanche (22-11-3) with Nathan MacKinnon, whose 19-game point streak (13 goals, 23 assists) came to an end, Mikko Rantanen and Valeri Nichushkin to one assist in the game and just five shots on goal; they limited the Avalanche to 40 shot attempts and allowed just 23 shots against an explosive offense.
But let's get into the three keys as to why this one painfully got away from the Blues:
1. Plain and simply: bad luck -- You're thinking at the very least, the Blues are getting a point, take it to overtime and play for the extra one.
Giving up a goal late in the third period and coming away with nothing when you outplayed an opponent, and on a nothing play, makes it even worse.
When Kasperi Kapanen fell on Oskar Sundqvist as the two were trying to win a loose puck off a face-off, and Valeri Nichushkin was able to use his big body to poke it back to Devon Toews, who teed up a shot from the point that caromed off defenseman Justin Faulk and past Jordan Binnington with 2:54 to play, it ruined what should have been a fourth straight win for the home side.
"Two of our guys got tied up," Blues interim coach Drew Bannister said. "I thought we could have done a better job boxing out towards our net to give 'Binner' ... I don't know if it was tipped or not but we had an opportunity to box out early to not let there be any traffic in front of our net."
Binnington, who earlier in the third period stopped a Cale Makar penalty shot, blamed himself.
"I was going to make the low blocker save and I think it kind of just went off something in front there and kind of went through," Binnington said. "After a game like that and we played that way, I want to find a way to stop that puck for sure."
2. Power play continues to cost the Blues games -- In a game in which a special teams goal -- even thought the Blues got another shorthanded goal -- could have made a difference, the power play failed once again.
They had four opportunities and five shots total, but the bottom line, especially with two opportunities in the third period of a 1-1 game, is the Blues couldn't gain the lead because of it, and in essence was a reason it cost them a game that was there to be had.
"We had some real good looks," Bannister said. "Early on, I thought we were about to break out, but again, we weren't able to finish on our opportunities, but they were there. Our power play I thought looked real good for, I think we had three opportunities, four opportunities. On three of the four, we had real good looks.
"I thought we shot the puck a lot, but we missed some empty nets or we missed the net. I thought early on, we shot the puck from the top that we haven't seen, which created more opportunities for guys coming off the flanks, but I thought we made some real good plays down low that just we didn't seem to be able to connect."
3. Too many missed shots -- The Blues had 63 shot attempts in the game and limited to Colorado to 40. That's a good thing.
But having 22 that miss the net -- can't happen.
And a number of them were prime scoring chances that they simply have to at least force the goalie, in this case Alexandar Georgiev, make a save on.
Pavel Buchnevich, who led the Blues with five missed shots, had three of them in the first period. One from the right circle and two from the slot where if just one of those go in, they're talking victory instead of defeat too.
Kevin Hayes (3), Justin Faulk, Torey Krug, Jordan Kyrou, Jake Neighbours and Colton Parayko (all two each) missed the net multiple times in the contest.
