ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Blues made a pit stop at home for one game, after returning from a 10-day, four-game Canadian road swing looking for a season sweep against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday.
The Blues fought in the third period and battled back, but ultimately fell, 4-3 to drop their second game in the past three.
Jake Neighbours had a goal and an assist and Brayden Schenn and Jordan Kyrou each scored third-period goals to rally the team but could get no closer than a goal.
Jordan Binnington made 27 saves for the Blues (14-14-2), who dropped back to .500 on the season.
Let’s dive into tonight’s three takeaways:
* No energy early, no legs, not being sharp all connected — The Blues talked at length at the morning skate earlier in the day that this would be a tough game to play, simply being on the road for so long and having to adjust their body clocks back to being in the Midwest.
Coach Jim Montgomery even said the team may have been back home from the 3.5-plus hour flight back from Vancouver on Wednesday but that their bodies were “still in the Rocky Mountains.”
They stressed the need to have energy early, and if the legs weren’t there right away, play a smart game.
That was hardly the case, falling behind 1-0 on a Tyler Toffoli goal 1:21 in on a goalmouth scramble. But this was the case really throughout the first period when the Blues were outshot 14-4, they lost every loose puck battle, their puck play wasn’t good and the lack of energy and no playing smart went had in hand.
“We wanted to start on time, we didn’t start on time,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t manage the game well enough early on.”
Captain Brayden Schenn said the team needed to be in it mentally and if you’re not, then it affects the physical side.
“It’s a little bit of both (mental and physical),” Schenn said. “It’s definitely the time change, right? A couple hours, getting up early, but every team does it in the League. That’s no excuse. They’re tougher games to play, no doubt about it. But that’s at the same time, when you have that, you have to play smart. We’d probably like to have our first two periods back and just manage the game a little bit better.”
“We were prepared. We were ready. What we talked about is if your game’s not where it needs to be early, don’t force things and play the right way. I just think that we for whatever reason, it took us some time to get going. We found our legs in the third, but just have to play a little bit smarter when you know you’re not going to have your best legs coming back from the west coast.”
Things didn’t get a whole lot better in the second despite coming out of the first tied 1-1 thanks to a beautiful goal by player of the game, Jake Neighbours, that included allowing a back-breaking goal to Macklin Celebrini with 6.7 seconds left in the period to make it 3-1.
“Simplify early, which we didn’t do,” Blues defenseman Ryan Suter said. “And then just get your work boots on. These are tough ones but we all knew that. It took us two periods to figure that out.
“‘Monty’ said it. When you come off these road trips, you’ve got to keep it simple, you’ve go to use your brain more than you use your other parts. We just weren’t able to get it going until the third period.
“When you don’t have it, you’ve got to use your brain. We were giving up odd-man rushes. It cost us twice, and just not playing in the offensive zone like we had been in previous games.”
* Costly mistakes that led to two 2-on-1 goals — Montgomery made an example of a goal the Blues allowed in similar fashion Nov. 30 against the Philadelphia Flyers when a F3 doesn’t become a safety for a pinching defenseman that moves in to try to hold a puck in the offensive zone.
It happened twice to the Blues on Thursday. One that led to Celebrini’s tie-breaking goal to make it 2-1 at 5:43 of the second period and another by former Blues defenseman Jake Walman at 6:01 of the third to make it 4-2.
Celebrini’s goal came as a result of Dylan Holloway’s failure to be the safety net for Suter:
Then just 27 seconds after Schenn made it 3-2, Brandon Saad was supposed to be the F3 to the safety for P.O. Joseph’s pinch along the wall and the puck got past him for a 2-on-1 between Nikolai Kovalenko and Walman:
“Even after we score to make it 3-2 and we have all the momentum, we give up another odd-man rush,” Montgomery said. “Very similar to the second goal that they got.”
Montgomery confirmed it’s the forwards’ responsibility.
“We’re asking our defensemen to pinch pucks that are on walls and they did and they kept them in,” he said. “Now what’s happening is our forwards have got to get above. The forward that’s responsible for replacing the ‘D,’ when they puck gets stopped, he’s stopping and San Jose’s forwards get in behind them. So now, we don’t win the battle for the loose puck, they pop it by us and now they have a 2-on-1. It’s the exact same goal that Philly scored on too when we were in here.”
It’s something that’s going to have to get corrected.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get to our game early enough, didn’t have our legs early and they capitalized,” Schenn said. “Kind of gave up a couple off-man rushes that happen and they were able to capitalize on them.”
* No quit Blues — When you allow a goal late like the Blues did in the second to fall behind by two, there could be a carryover affect.
That wasn’t the case here.
The Blues found their legs — finally — and pushed.
Schenn’s goal at 5:34 came as a result of getting pucks and bodies to the net:
https://twitter.com/nhl_goal_bot/status/1867407072410710524
And when Jordan Kyrou made it 4-3 at 7:57, there was plenty of time:
“We did what we should have been doing all game and just getting pucks to the goal line and wearing them down, creating momentum in the offensive end,” Schenn said. “That’s the good thing about this team. We never, never quit. We ever give up. We keep on pushing.”
“We made too may mistakes and had to fight too hard to get back into the game too many times,” Montgomery said.
