Instant Analysis: Blues Let Another Winnable Game Slip Away, 3-2 In Overtime To Celebrini-Less Sharks

ST. LOUIS – You hear the term that pucks eventually start to go into the net when you’re doing other good things on the ice.

The St. Louis Blues are doing a lot of good things; they just aren’t completing the finished product. That finished product is scoring, and in the early part of the NHL season when goals seem to be going in by the bushel, the Blues can’t buy goals.

It cost them again on Thursday when they created plenty of scoring opportunities, led twice but ultimately fell to the San Jose Sharks, 3-2 in overtime, at Enterprise Center on Thursday.

The Blues fell to 1-2-1 on the season and are off to the kind of slower start that they were looking to avoid, losing their third in a row after a season-opening 4-0 win against the Dallas Stars.

To the game and the pivotal points …

* Blues’ top line is doing them no favors right now – Robert Thomas, Dylan Holloway and Jimmy Snuggerud created ample opportunities, probably more so than they have in the previous four games this season.

The puck is simply not going into the net for them. No better examples were when Thomas pulled a puck into the slot and rang the post in a 2-2 game, and then he had the winning goal on his stick – also in the slot – and a yawning, empty cage staring at him, only to see San Jose’s Kiefer Sherwood get a stick on the shot attempt and push it over the bar.

So when they’re not scoring, they sure as heck better be good defensively, but that wasn’t the case on San Jose’s tying goal by Collin Graf at 6:05 of the third period that tied the game 2-2.

In the shift, Thomas lost the puck twice, Pavel Buchnevich – who had taken Snuggerud’s spot on the shift – lost it a third time, Holloway wasn’t hard enough on a puck in the righthand corner that Sam Dickinson threw into the crease area before it caromed off Adam Jiricek right to Graf in the slot.

“You’re up 2-1 and you’re towards the end of a shift, pucks go deep and you just keep grinding them down,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. ‘You keep your shifts short, you keep staying on top of them. I use the term when you’re up by a goal in the third period, you skate ‘em into the ground, and that means you never stop checking. You can only do that if you’re maintaining short shifts and you’re playing north.”

The line on Thursday generated 15 shot attempts (five on net) but Thomas (three) and Snuggerud (five) missed the net a combined eight times.

You’d be concerned if they weren’t generating, but when you’re paid to score and you’re not, then other areas of the game need to be up to par and when you’re giving up without putting away, then it continues to be a concern.

“In this league, they want to be putting the puck in the back of the net and I thought they did a lot of great things really well, and as long as they’re creating chances, they’re eventually going to drop,” said Blues forward Connor McMichael. ‘I’ve seen it many times from them.”

* Generating chances plus finishing chances isn’t equaling out – For all the chances the Blues are generating, the finished product just isn’t equating.

When they led early in the hockey game on a beautiful give-and-go sequence between McMichael and Mason McTavish (more on them below), there were ample opportunities to extend that lead with several quality scoring chances.

The Blues outshot the Sharks, who were thoroughly beaten 5-0 on Monday against the Dallas Stars, 11-3 in the first period but led by just one goal thanks to a lack of finishing again.

“I thought for the majority of the game, our process was really good,” Montgomery said. ‘Right now, if we fell out of a boat and we were trying to score a goal, we would not hit the ocean, and it’s causing problems. There’s frustration coming because we’re not scoring, and it’s hard to stick with the process when you’re getting frustrated. We just have to keep working. I thought in the third period we came out and again we started to dictate play really well, and we were dictating play and even though we ended up shorthanded, we get that great goal shorthanded; our penalty kill’s been really good so far this year.

“I thought we were in complete control of the game and we need to be comfortable winning 2-1. It’s like we want to try and win 3-, 4-1. It’s mistakes we made that allowed them to score that second goal and you end up in overtime and anything can happen in 3-on-3 hockey. Unfortunately we were on the wrong end of it.”

In a time when scoring is way up because of the shortened training camp and only four preseason games, the Blues have scored a grand total of nine goals (including two empty-netters) in four games.

“I think we were the better team for most of the game,” McMichael said. “We kind of just got up by one and kept falling asleep and let them back into the game and that’s the type of stuff that hurts you in this league. We’ve got to tighten that up.

“… I think we’re generating chances. I think we’d obviously like to see a couple more go into the back of the net, but that’s not really an excuse. We’ve got to find a way to win those 2-1 games when we’re not scoring as many as we would like to. It’s just something where we’re going to have to go to the drawing board and get better from.”

Montgomery said, “In three of our four games, I’m not positive of this one yet, but I’m assuming we have more Grade A chances 5-on-5. This would be three out of four. So our process of what we believe in, getting more Grade A chances of winning the net front battles, which we’re doing consistently again this year; the only game that we haven’t done those things is the Colorado game and as you would have guessed, but besides that, there’s a lot of positives that are coming. The fact that we’re not scoring is causing the results to be magnified in the wrong direction. If we are a process-oriented team, we look at what the numbers are telling us, and in practice, our players need to bear down and score goals. Scoring’s a habit just like skating fast and stopping and starting and creating good habits, screening the goalie. Those are things we’ve got to bury. I think we missed a couple open nets tonight and you think, ‘Oh jeez, they just got their stick on it,’ but if you do it in practice, then it just becomes natural. You try to bury the puck right through the net, make a hole in the net like Brett Hull would.”

In that case, if you're the better team in three of four games, you can't be losing to the woeful Chicago Blackhawks (4-2 on Tuesday) without Connor Bedard, and you can't be losing Thursday when the Sharks were playing without their rising star and captain, Macklin Celebrini.

* Moral victories don’t count – Montgomery saying the Blues have been the better team in three of their first four games, he isn’t off one iota. But the bottom line is they have three of a possible eight points. If you’re the better team in three of the first four games, that’s not good enough then.

“It was a hard-fought game I think by both teams,” said Blues defenseman Cam Fowler, who had a had strong game playing 22:43. “I certainly think we gave ourselves an opportunity to win the game. Only coming away with one point is disappointing, but there’s a lot that we can build off of as well, some points that we can work on moving forward and getting ready for Saturday.”

* McMichael-McTavish-Berggren line continues to flourish – One of the biggest questions coming in was would the Blues have ample enough support from the second line this season to balance out the scoring.

Who would have thought that just four games in, there would be no worry regarding the McTavish line and plenty to worry about with the Thomas line?

McMichael’s goal came as a result of Berggren disrupting the play in the neutral zone near the Blues’ bench, McMichael skating in with speed, and he and McTavish doing the rest for a backdoor tap-in:

“Yes and Berggren. Berggren’s playing really well,” Montgomery said. ‘Ever since we put Berggren up with those two, that line’s been our best line for two games in a row, generating the most chances, controlling the game, making solid plays coming out of the D-zone and leading to really good O-zone play. Very happy with that chemistry on that line right now.”

McMichael said, “I think (the chemistry’s) been really good. It’s been easy for me, to be honest. Coming to the Blues at the same time as (McTavish), it’s been like a breath of fresh air having another guy in the same scenario as me. We’ve been bouncing a lot of things off of each other and just looking to keep that rolling.”

McMichael is a point-per-game player (two goals, two assists) so far, and McTavish has two goals and an assist, and Berggren picked up his first point Thursday.

* Penalty kill continues to shine, leads to a shorthanded goal – At the start of the third period, the Blues had 1:56 to kill off a Brandon Carlo delay of game minor.

It came at a crucial time in a 1-1 game. Kill it, then settle in and try to win the game.

Who would have imagined a shorthanded goal to put the Blues ahead? But that’s what Dillon Dube did when he made it 2-1 at 1:39 of the third period off a 2-on-1 rush with Buchnevich, then keeping the puck and beating Alex Nedeljkovic into the top right corner:

* Were there enough saves? – One would say yes, especially when Joel Hofer made this amazing save on Luca Cagnoni in the second period:

But I'd like to see saves on the first Sharks goal scored by Tyler Toffoli and you could make the case that even on Darnell Nurse's overtime goal, it wasn't an overly aggressive or pinpoint accuracy shot, more so right through Hofer. 

It's hard to put much on the goaltending, but in those moments, one could make the case for a little more.

* Individual standouts – Including Fowler, who we mentioned, Colton Parayko looks really confident right now jumping into the offense and looking to create havoc in the O-zone.

Parayko, who passed Barret Jackman into sole possession of second place for all-time games played in Blues history (804), played 23:23.

Philip Broberg (24:25) had a really solid game as well, also jumping into the rush and attacking when the situations arose.

Pius Suter, who had a really solid shorthanded shift who finished with 11:13 of ice time, played well, as did Carlo (18:38 ice time).

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