Three Takeaways From Blues’ 4-2 Loss Against Oilers

It was bound to happen at some point.

All good things come to an end eventually, and for the St. Louis Blues, their first regulation loss came under Jim Montgomery.

The Edmonton Oilers were opportunistic with their chances and took advantage of a couple mental blunders by the Blues, doubling up St. Louis, 4-2, on Saturday at Rogers Place to spoil the respective returns of Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, each signing an offer sheet to leave Edmonton for St. Louis.

The Blues (13-13-2) actually didn’t play a bad game in this one. They were the victims of their own undoing that the Oilers (15-10-2) took full advantage of, which good teams should do, and as a result, they ended the Blues’ four-game road winning streak and dropped the Blues to 2-1-0 on a Canadian road trip that ends Tuesday against the Vancouver Canucks.

Here are three takeaways from a tough defeat:

* Untimely mistakes — The Blues were their own worst victims and it cost them.

They were playing a pretty good road period in the first but when Corey Perry came in from the point uncontested to make it 1-0 at 12:25, you wondered why the Blues got puck-watching. But there was a reason.

Confusion on a line change resulted in them having only four skaters on the ice at the end. They had made two switches, but when Robert Thomas and Colton Parayko realized each had come on for Oskar Sundqvist, each peeled back off the ice causing he chaos and Perry waltzed in for an easy redirection:

The second goal was one of those unfortunate unforced errors by Broberg trying to move a puck up the ice when he shoveled a backhand right off the leg of his partner Parayko into the slot to the wrong person if you’re the Blues [Connor McDavid], and McDavid quickly beat Jordan Binnington at 5:19 of the second period to make it 2-0.

The third was the result of a Radek Faksa goaltender interference penalty that it’s understandable why the officials called it because Faksa just ran into Stuart Skinner trying to come around the net on the forecheck while the Edmonton goalie saw it coming and decided to play basketball and set a pick, but it’s a play where Faksa has to try and avoid contact even if the goalie is outside of his crease, which he clearly was.

Zach Hyman scored on another redirection at 14:36 of the second to make it 3-0, off a McDavid feed to the back of the right post past Ryan Suter.

And on the fourth goal, after the Blues were making their push and had cut it to 3-2 when Holloway scored in his return, and Neighbours’ power-play goal made it a one-goal game with nearly seven minutes left, Troy Stecher’s back-breaker from the right wall that Binnington would like back, made it 4-2, on a puck the goalie didn’t seem to pick up in time and somehow it go through:

* Lack of finish — The Blues outshot the Oilers 31-22 and had a good amount of scoring chances but it was one of those games they lacked enough finish.

The Blues had five players (Broberg, Brandon Saad, Zack Bolduc, Holloway and Pavel Buchnevich with at least three shots on goal), and they had nine players with at least two.

Robert Thomas had eight shot attempts, Kyrou had six and passed up multiple others, Bolduc had eight, Holloway had six and Buchnevich had six. The chances were there, but having to play catch-up wasn’t ideal.

* Puck transition wasn’t clean — The times the Blues were hemmed in the zone with lengthy shifts was a result of poor puck play.

The only good out of it was they limited the Oilers to the perimeter of those zone attacks, but they just were too inconsistent with their puck play. It could be the long road trip taking its toll, it could be the Oilers pressing high, much like the Calgary Flames did on Thursday, but regardless, it just didn’t seem like puck play was clean, and when he Blues were able to transition it, there were too many one-and-done’s.

Hear what Montgomery and players had to say following the game: