ST. LOUIS – It’s painstakingly obvious the St. Louis Blues [http://thn.com/stlouis] should have won a game in which it led 4-0 last Saturday [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/st-louis-blues/latest-news/observations-from-blues-6-4-collapse-vs-red-wings]. Thursday’s 4-3 shootout loss to the Vancouver Canucks [http://thn.com/vancouver] probably felt like it was right up there with it. The Blues dominated a number of facets of their game against the Canucks, who won it on a Jake DeBrusk shootout goal in the third round, and even though the Blues (3-6-2) earned a point, their winless streak reached six games (0-4-2). And add another piece of kryptonite to the Blues, and that’s Kiefer Sherwood, who scored all three Canucks goals to give him five of his nine on the season against St. Louis. Pius Suter had a goal and an assist, Dylan Holloway and Jimmy Snuggerud scored and Oskar Sundqvist and Cam Fowler each had two assists. Jordan Binnington made just 15 saves (more on him below). Let’s look at Thursday’s game observations: * Shot volume high, not enough pumped into net – The Blues were all over it tonight, from creating chances to providing a net front presence, getting to rebounds. Suter’s goal at 10:48 of the third period was a perfect example of crashing the net: The Blues had 10 high danger chances in the game, according to naturalstattrick.com. They simply left too many goals on the table – again. “I’ve go to think there’s 6-7 chances that should have been in the back of the net,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. ‘At least we’re there now, we’re getting more chances, that’s a good thing. It’s a step in the right direction, that’s a positive. The negative is there’s some game management issues and there’s some decisions that just … we have to become a smarter hockey team. “Yes, usually (win that game), and not because of the shot clock. We’re not a real shots on goal evaluators as a staff, but we had a lot of point blank shots, we had a lot of traffic going to the net, we created a lot of chaos offensively. But you know, Vancouver did a good job of hanging around, and then they got the lead. I love the way we fought back, but some of the goals we gave up, we’ve got to be smarter, we’ve got to continue to build in the right way. We did build tonight. It’s a step in the right direction. We need to win that game, it’s that simple.” Sundqvist lamented an opportunity he had in the first minute of the third off a great feed from Snuggerud that he missed the one-timer on. "We probably should have scored a couple more goals tonight," Sundqvist said. "We had a lot of scoring chances. I had a Grade A scoring chance where I didn’t hit the net. It is a lot of scoring chances that we need to score goals on. It shouldn’t even come down to (a goalie interference challenge)." Suter added, "I think it was a step in the right direction. We can be better. Just got find a way to get two points. We had some chances, myself in OT there. Just got to make more of it. "We had some chances. Just got to bury those. It was a good step but we obviously got more." * Limited chances allowed, catastrophic results regardless – Once again, the Blues didn’t allow a ton. They outshot the Canucks 39-18 and missed the net another 17 times while having 16 more shots blocked. But each of Vancouver’s goals, all scored by Sherwood, could have been preventable. Holloway made it 1-0 3:23 into the game: And then the Blues were caught when Sherwood tied it 1-1 at 13:08 of the first, and it was Binnington, with puck on stick, putting Justin Faulk in a precarious situation with Evander Kane coming at him hard, the puck bounds away, loose and now it’s chaos, and Sherwood pounces on it and pops it through the Blues goalie: When Snuggerud’s bullet of a wrister put the Blues ahead 2-1 58 seconds into the second, a power-play goal, Sherwood took advantage of another Blues blunder on a breakaway that tied it 2-2 at 10:42 of the second. On the play, the Blues’ fourth line was at the end of a shift, Philip Broberg enters the zone on a 2-on-2 with Nathan Walker. Instead of just putting the puck deep, he tries to slide Walker a pas towards to slot coming in, even though Walker was covered heavily by Drew O’Connor. Nick Bjugstad sees possession of the puck thinking he can go off for a change, and Colton Parayko, instead of being the safety net in the middle of the ice, decides to pinch in. When the puck gets turned over, Sherwood is cherry picking in the neutral zone and goes in and beats Binnington on the backhand: “You give up a breakaway off a 2-on-2, that shouldn’t happen,” Montgomery said. “… There’s two things there. Bjugstad’s fine changing. He should expect the puck’s going to go to the goal line. We have a 2-on-2 and it’s an opportunity for our players to learn. We’ve got to start learning and applying now. Broberg needs, it’s just a 2-on-2. He thinks he can hit 26 for a breakaway. He’s not on a breakaway, so the puck just needs to go to the goal line because we’ve all been out there for a while. Fifty-five is coming to join as the third man. That can’t happen. One defenseman’s in, the other protects the middle of the ice. That’s the way we want our defensemen to play if their partner is in the offensive rush.” * Blues need their goalies to start making saves – The Blues can talk about not defending the middle of the ice enough and the minimal number of scoring chances that they give up, they’re of the high danger variety, but Binnington and Joel Hofer need to start making saves. Period. Allowing three goals on 18 shots again just isn’t good enough. In his last four appearances, Binnington’s save percentage has been .833, .789, .815 and .833. He’s allowed 15 goals in those four games (three of them starts) on 82 shots. We all remember how many games they kept the Blues in it last year and saved them with clutch performances. On this night, don’t lose possession of a puck, make that breakaway save, or stop that short side shot from beating you high shoulder: I’m just not seeing the two of them make THAT save enough lately, the one that you’ll go back to and say, ‘Remember that save.’ That’s not happening right now. The guy at the other end (Kevin Lankinen) stopped 36 of 39. That’s a solid night’s work and a big reason why the Canucks, instead of the Blues, took two points. Sundqvist was saying the right things, “It is tough when you see it too. It’s not like we’re passing up the middle and they’re walking down and rip it in. It’s small mistakes and we’re maybe more not protecting the middle of the ice good enough because I don’t want anyone to write about me trying to rip the goalies apart here. ‘Binner’ and ‘Hofe’ have been amazing for us for years. They’ve been playing good and they work their asses off every day. None of this is on them. It’s on all of us. We just need to be better at covering up the middle and covering up for them.” That’s great for teammates to stick up for one another, but I’ll say it: until these guys start making multiple, key saves throughout games, the Blues are going to have a lot of these where they feel like they outplay teams and not walk away with two pioints. It’s that simple. * Good call by Monty and Co. – Vancouver thought it had a lead late in the game, with 2:42 as a matter of fact, with Kane scoring from the slot of a rebound. But the Blues challenged for goalie interference, and video showed old friend Mackenzie MacEachern’s skate and stick bumped Binnington just on the edge of the crease, enough for officials to overturn the goal that would have made it 4-3 and kept it 3-3: If the Blues lose the challenge there, the Canucks go on the power play, up a goal, chance to close it out with a man-advantage goal and if not, the Blues get maybe half a minute to pull the goalie and try to miraculously tie it. Instead, it helped at least earn a point. “It was right down to the last minute,” Montgomery said. “We saw the overhead on the bench pretty quick. (Video coach) Elliott Mondou did a really good job saying, ‘I’m not sure right now.’ I’m not sure the communication lines through coach (Steve) Ott were great and then when I called the ref over to buy some more time, we had seen it enough that I was comfortable ready to challenge it and then Elliott came in and said, ‘Yes, challenge it.’ It was stick on stick and it went through his blocker side. I was leaning towards it and when he confirms it because he studies all those things, it really made us feel that we were 80 percent certain that it would get reversed.” * Dvorsky, looks like he belongs; Snuggerud shines – Dalibor Dvorsky made his season debut on Thursday, and unlike his first two NHL games last season where he was used sparingly and playing both center and wing, he anchored a line with Jordan Kyrou and Mathieu Joseph and looked like he belonged. Dvorsky had four shot attempts, one that Lankinen needed to make a good save on from the slot, and another off the nearside post at the end of the first period on a one-timer off the power play. Dvorsky played 16:36 and won nine of his 13 face-offs (69 percent) and said earlier in the day that he would look to keep things simple. He did that and then some and just looked like he’s starting to figure things out. “I thought he was really good,” Montgomery said. ‘He played a really good game. I thought he did some really good things on the power play. I liked his speed and pace tonight. So a lot of good things about him and then I thought our other young forward was our best forward tonight, Snuggerud.” Snuggerud was all over the ice tonight, and his snipe from the right dot that put the Blues ahead for the second time in the second period was a thing of beauty: Snuggerud played 20:14 and had four shots on goal (six attempts) and looked like a player who could have been the difference maker Thursday. Montgomery liked the young guys’ play so much that each was on the ice late in the third period of a 3-3 game. That tells you enough there that the coaches trusted what they were doing and earned that ice time. “Yeah, they definitely did. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have put them out,” Montgomery said. ‘It's that simple. As a coach you have a gut feel behind the bench, and you have a gut feel about who are the players that might get it done and that's who you put out there in those situations. Usually it's not your young forwards, but tonight they played really well that they had earned it.” “They're super-skillful. They're smart players,” Sundqvist said. ‘I think Dvorsky came in and played amazing today. We know Snuggerud. He can create stuff on his own. He’s definitely a difference maker for us. For those two, they just need to keep going, keep bringing energy and tilt the game over to our advantage.” * Are Blues snake biten right now? – They sure feel like it. The bounces are not going their way. At some point, the damn has to burst. "That’s what we’re believing in and we’re talking about it within the group and with the coaches," Sundqvist said. "We’ve just got to keep going. I don’t think we’re playing bad. I think we’re playing hard and we’re creating a lot of scoring chances and we should have won more hockey games, but at some point, it has to turn. It has to. " We’re trying. I don’t know what to say. It’s hard right now. We just need a frickin win." Image [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/17ef60c1-c9eb-4d07-9748-22c83fbe52b2.jpeg] For action-packed issues, access to the entire magazine archive and a free issue, subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free [https://thehockeynews.store/products/print-subscription]. Get the latest news and trending stories by subscribing to our newsletter here [http://eepurl.com/i7OC4I]. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on THN.com or creating your own post in our community forum.
