Observations From Blues' 3-1 Loss To Jets

When it comes to the road these days for the St. Louis Blues, the picture hasn’t been perfect.

Even though there were parts of their game that dictated that they would prevail in their game on Tuesday against the Winnipeg Jets, there’s plenty of deficiencies that seem to prevail in a broader light. It resulted in a seventh straight road loss, 3-1 to the Jets on Tuesday at Canada Life Centre.

All the Blues (19-23-8) could muster off backup goalie Eric Comrie was a Jordan Kyrou power play goal, and Joel Hofer only faced 15 shots but it wasn’t good enough on this night.

Let’s take a look at the game observations:

* Another night, another special teams game decided in the wrong direction – It’s no secret that the Blues’ special teams this season are simply put: bad.

The power play isn’t good (26th coming into Tuesday’s action) and the penalty kill was even worse at 28th at 75.3 percent.

If you’re special teams are bad, you can’t afford to be bad in other areas, and unfortunately, the Blues’ special teams gets magnified plenty because they just don’t compensate for how ineffective it is.

And on Tuesday, the penalty kill did not get the job done. Again.

When Nathan Walker was called for a double minor for high sticking at 8:39 of the first period, and it was a tough one because he got clipped by his own stick initially by Jets defenseman Isaak Phillips’ stick lift before catching Phillips with his own twig, by the rules it was properly administered.

How about a statement PK for a change to set the tone for the rest of the game, because the Blues started that game 5-on-5 on the front foot and were the better team throughout. And they started the better team.

Instead, they’re chasing the game (again) because their PK unit can’t get the job done.

The Jets would score on both ends of Walker’s double-minor, and Josh Morrissey started it with a shot from the high slot past a screened Hofer, who couldn’t see by the perfect screen by Tyler Tucker on his own goalie that made it 1-0 at 9:52:

And then Mark Scheifele’s first of two goals made it 2-0 at 11:25 after the Blues failed to get a clear, the puck would get rimmed around to the lefthand side, and Scheifele curled to the net and lifted a shot over Hofer on the short side, a goal that has plagued Hofer in his young career by going down too early and making his 6-foot-5 frame look smaller than needed:

And for a Blues team that has trouble scoring goals as it is, it’s not the ideal situation of chasing a game.

The Jets had two goals on three PP shots, and meanwhile, the Blues would have four power plays in this game, the first time they were operating without associate coach Steve Ott, who was sent to be the head coach of Springfield of the American Hockey League on Monday after Steve Konowalchuk was fired. Ott ran the power play, and Blues coach Jim Montgomery took over those duties, but the Blues had four opportunities in this game and had just five shots on goal. That has to be something that changes.

Kyrou, who hadn’t scored since Dec. 1 (13 games) did cash in on a similar situation when the Blues had four minutes of power play time when Jonatan Berggren was high-sticked by Vladislav Namestnikov at 16:35 of the second period, and Kyrou did something we haven’t seen much from him, one-time a Justin Faulk pass from the left circle high glove side at 17:23 to make it 2-1, ending a drought of 144:50 since the last goal scored:

But that’s all the Blues could muster. The power play could have made a difference in another game and wasn’t effective enough.

It's sad that these two goalies (Hofer and Jordan Binnington) feel they have to be perfect to overcompensate for an inept offense that can't convert to save their lives, and I think it complicates their respective games as well. It's affected Binnington more so than Hofer.

* Blues wasted a strong 5-on-5 game – The shots for and against at 5-on-5 was 18-12 in favor of the Blues. The Blues doubled up the Jets in scoring chances (20-10) according to natstattrick, along with have four high danger scoring chances to Winnipeg’s one.

The Blues held a 57-38 Corsi rating in the game.

Those are just a few of the numbers, facing a team playing the second of a back to back having traveled from Chicago from a game Monday night.

The Jets had just two shots on goal in the third period and really holding on for dear life, and one of those two shots was a Scheifele empty-netter with 2:23 to play right after the Blues pulled Hofer but once again, that compete level to win a puck was non-existent and the puck was in their net seconds later.

It was the 10th empty-netter the Blues have given up this season, which is 10th most.

The Blues really deserved to win this game with the metrics of how they played the game (aside from special teams again) but when you’re last in the league in goal scoring (2.43 per game coming in), it tends to waste efforts like this because of the inability of put pucks in the net.

Once again, 22 missed shots on target is way too many.

The Blues simply don’t get to the hard areas enough either for loose pucks to hit them after initial shots, collect rebounds, a puck go in off a skate, a shin pad, something, anything. It’s an ongoing process but unfortunately, a recurring theme.

For action-packed issues, access to the entire magazine archive and a free issue, subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free. Get the latest news and trending stories by subscribing to our newsletter here. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on THN.com or creating your own post in our community forum.