Brayden Schenn: It sucks. ... Everyone's pissed off

ST. LOUIS -- It was quick. It was brisk. And in the end, it was tiring somewhat but with a fun kick to it.

Such was life for the St. Louis Blues in their final practice before their home finale on Sunday when the Blues (42-33-5) host the Seattle Kraken (33-33-13) at noon (TNT, MAX, ESPN 101.1-FM).

The mood coming to work on a Saturday morning hours after playing the 80th of an 82-game regular season schedule was light in a sense but also quite somber. Players and coaches alike weren't in a very festive mood after being officially eliminated from playoff contention following a 5-2 home loss against the Carolina Hurricanes followed by the Vegas Golden Knights kicking the Minnesota Wild to the curb, 7-2, to make it official.

"It sucks," Blues captain Brayden Schenn said succinctly. "Once you're finally out after playing in the playoffs before and having the chance to win stuff, it only makes you want to do it again. Miss out on another year. It's disappointing. As a team, obviously a lot of ups and downs this year. We just weren't able to obviously make it happen in the end.

"Everyone's pissed off. You're at the end of your season. Practices aren't really going to do much for you at this point. You just go out and play hockey games and play with some pride. That's really all you can control. Play a 12 o'clock game tomorrow after a practice day. Everyone's disappointed. A lot of ups and downs throughout the year. Just have to obviously learn from it."

That's what the Blues, who will miss the playoffs for the second straight season, have left is pride. They now know after 80 games, all they have left is a home date against the Kraken on Sunday afternoon before concluding the regular season on Wednesday in Dallas against the Stars, the same venue they closed out last season.

It's why practice was really quick Saturday morning, and finished off with two sets of teams in a shootout competition with the first to score five times winning.

The team with Nathan Walker, Tyler Tucker and Scott Perunovich won after that trio scored on Joel Hofer on consecutive shots after it appeared neither team would beat the goalies.

"Pretty light," Blues interim coach Drew Bannister said. "To be realistic, guys are kind of still in mourning this morning. I guess that's probably the easiest way to put it. It's a tough day to come to the rink, so it's tough to ... you don't want to grind them. Reality is setting of where we're at and how far we've come and how we have two games left. So today is get through it, refocus ourselves the rest of the day and make sure when we come in tomorrow, we're prepared to play and play a hard, energetic, physical hockey game."

Essentially, the Blues have been in playoff mode now for several months. After putting themselves behind the Eight-ball early, firing their coach [Craig Berube], refocusing themselves to make a push, they in fact made a pretty good push but ran out of time and games.

"It is what it is. I think it stems right from the start of the season," Blues goalie Jordan Binnington said. "We've got to learn from this and understand that all points are important, especially early on in the year and building early, realizing that you don't want to have to play desperate for the last two months every time, every year. We've got a lot of young guys here and hopefully we can learn from it. We're probably not the exact same group next year, so where everyone goes. If we're all here, it's from the start and we build because we've got a lot of talent, we're right there, just a couple points out, which obviously is frustrating, but all you can do is learn."

It's safe to say the Blues have really ramped up their intensity the past couple months knowing they had a realistic chance of making the playoffs until they fell out of a wild card and started chasing the third week of February. So in reality, the final two games become irrelevant.

"I think the reality is you want to be playing meaningful hockey games these last two games, realistically (now), they're not meaningful," Schenn said. "You go out there and you play hard and do what you can, but there's just a different mentality when you come to the rink knowing that you have to get two points rather than the two points doesn't matter, right? We've been in playoff mode for a pretty long time, pretty much since 'Chief' was let go and just before Christmas. We had some really good stretches where we played a lot of good hockey and beat a lot of good teams this year. We flipped the script from last year. We couldn't beat the good teams and we were beating the bad teams all the time, not it's the reverse this year, which ultimately got us out of the playoffs. That's what's frustrating about it because you know you can hang with the good teams and beat the good teams, which we did all year. Unfortunately we had some key losses throughout the year that got us out of the playoffs."

Being just a handful of points back, the 'what if' game starts to play into effect, from fans to anyone that follows the team, and a consensus of fans point in the direction of losing to teams the Blues weren't supposed to lose to. And rightfully so, from San Jose (three times), Columbus (twice), Chicago and Arizona soon to be Utah whatever-they're-going-to-be-called (twice).

"You look at that, everyone talks about San Jose, this and that, but Chicago just beat Dallas the other day. Columbus just beat Colorado. It's a good league," Schenn said. "Philadelphia just lost eight in a row and they go and beat the best team in the league. It happens. It's a tough league. You need bounces, you need luck. You need to be ready every night. Some nights you unfortunately just don't have it throughout the year in the course of 82 (games). To play the 'what-if' game I don't think helps. I think in the reality of it, consistency's the No. 1 thing that gets you to the playoffs. I think probably we were just a little too much up and down."

The Blues have improved from last season. That's not disputable. Their point total as of Saturday (89) already surpassed last season's total of 81. A number of players made great strides, including Binnington and Joel Hofer in goal keeping the ship afloat. There are a number of younger players to be excited about, players who made great leaps. But there are veterans now that will be missing on what matters most, the playoffs, for a second straight year, and that doesn't sit well, nor should it.

"In saying we have a lot of young guys, there's a lot of guys here late 20s and early 30s. That's why you play, right," Binnington said. "So it kind of feels like ... it's kind of upsetting, but it's the life of an athlete. You've got to learn from everything. You've got to make the most of all the opportunities you've got because it's not going to be here forever."

Which is why the office was a tough place to be on this Saturday.

"I think it sucks for everybody," Bannister said. "If you're at this point of the season and you're not going to the playoffs, that's why you play the game. For the opportunity to win the Stanley Cup and continue to play more games. I would hope no one is happy where we're at. I would expect that no one is. It sucks and it's hard when you go through the ups and downs and you get that close, but I think there's a lot of lessons learned that we can take from this season on the positive and the negative side to make this a better team next year."