St. Louis ends three-game losing skid, tops Minnesota in matchup of two teams desperately trying to stay in playoff race by winning net front presence, blocking shots off sustained Wild zone time, creating power-play opportunities with their skating
ST. LOUIS -- The calendar has turned to March and the St. Louis Blues, if they should remain in this Western Conference playoff race, must start winning games.
And winning them regularly.
And winning games against opponents they're battling with is a good place to start. Saturday was no exception on their 3-1 win against the Minnesota Wild at Enterprise Center.
It wasn't always pretty, as interim coach Drew Bannister eluded to postgame, but at this point, it's not how, as long as they win.
The win ended a three-game slide (0-2-1) and it was just the third win in nine (3-5-1), and with the Nashville Predators surging, and Los Angeles Kings not falling back, the Blues have to continue to help themselves.
"I think for us, in the past, we haven't played well in these games," Bannister said. "By no means do I think we played our best, but I do think we found a way to win in the end. That's an important game for us and that's an important two points, and we've got to build momentum off this going onto the road."
"It’s important," added defenseman Torey Krug, who had an assist and an empty-net goal to seal the win. "We’re going on a road trip right now and we’re a few points back, so whenever you’re at home, you try to collect as many as you can. Important for our group, even our group confidence and psyche moving forward, it’s important for us.”
Let's take a look at three keys to pushing the Wild three points behind the Blues:
1. Winning the net front battle -- When the Blues are able to get rewarded for the net front battles, they typically come out on the winning end.
Alexey Toropchenko and Jake Neighbours did the honors in this game with net front presence and goals. Each carried its own merit.
Toropchenko was parked in front of Marc-Andre Fleury and got a piece of Scott Perunovich's shot that caromed off the post, off Fleury's skate and trickled over the line for a 1-0 lead in the first period, and Neighbours was positioned to the left of Fleury and was able to collect a rebound of a Robert Thomas wrister for a 2-1 lead in the second.
"You have to win at both ends of the ice in front of the net," Krug said. "'Binner' usually gives us a chance, same with 'Hofe'. When our guys are willing to go to the net, it forces us to shoot more pucks because we see the traffic there, and then guys are able to collect goals. It’s important for our team."
2. Blocked shots off Wild sustained o-zone time -- Make no mistake, Minnesota wanted to perform better coming off a 6-1 shellacking against the Predators on Thursday, and the Wild did a much better job Saturday of forechecking, possessing pucks and sustaining zone time.
But the Wild was only able to register 22 shots for the game, that's because the Blues got into shooting lanes and blocked 22 shots, including seven by Colton Parayko.
“Every win is important for us right now," Toropchenko said. "Doesn’t matter who we play. I love to say that all the time now. Just very exciting that we won tonight. We just need to keep going and win as many games as we can."
3. Creating power-play opportunities -- The Blues were skating, and as a result, the Wild took penalties.
Seven of them in total.
And while the Blues would have liked to turn more of those power-play opportunities into goals, they did get one (Neighbours) and seemed to really really stunt Minnesota's momentum as a result.
"I thought we had a lot of really good looks," Neighbours said. "Obviously at times there was some unexecuted stuff, but that's going to happen. I thought for the most part we were direct and getting things to the net. I had a couple looks that probably could have gone in and made it a bit easier on us, but overall, I think we're happy with it."
The Blues had 10 shots on the power play as a result.
"There were some good chances obviously," Bannister said. "There were some really good chances. We lacked execution on some of them, but obviously I'd like to score one or two more in that game I think, and I think the opportunity was there that could have separated us. A closer game, it probably shouldn't have been as close if we were able to score on those opportunities, but our power play's won us games before and they still chip in with one."
