I knew I was going out on a limb on March 31 when I looked at the Blues’ remaining schedule and wrote that they would go 12-9 down the stretch to squeak into the playoffs. They had lost four games in a row, including back-to-back games at home to Anaheim, and were just a point ahead of Arizona for fourth place in the West before my “bold” prediction.
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I thought the injured players who had been trickling back into the lineup might round into form with a few more games. I thought the reality of potentially missing the playoffs might finally kick these guys into gear. I thought they would show some pride.
Outside of a tantalizing three-game winning streak, which conveniently kept everyone living in the same ZIP code after the NHL trade deadline on April 12, we’ve seen nothing like what I expected. The lineup may have few different faces than last August, but this is the team that lost in the first round of the playoffs in the Edmonton bubble. And now, after following the winning streak with losses in winnable games against Colorado and Arizona on Wednesday and Saturday, they are once again on the playoff bubble.
The Blues are one point behind Arizona with 13 games remaining in the regular season. They might make it — they do have three games in hand on the Coyotes — but this is not a good look for the current state of the franchise, nor the future.
Let’s have a real conversation …
Vladimir Tarasenko has been invisible and it’s getting beyond the grace period for him, coming off the shoulder injury. Jaden Schwartz can’t contribute offensively, with the exception of the occasional outburst, and he’s the guy you’re trying to re-sign. Like Schwartz, Brayden Schenn works hard but can’t buy a goal. Mike Hoffman can’t believe he’s still with the Blues, and while he’s been scoring lately, he’s making just as many turnovers. Torey Krug hasn’t scored a five-on-five goal since he played for the Boston Bruins. Jordan Binnington signed a six-year, $36 million contract and is giving up one goal a game that the team can’t afford.
Did I mention that the coach, Craig Berube, has called his team “fragile” several times in the past month or two? It’s the same word that was being used to describe the team in late 2018, when Berube became the head coach and helped the players find their confidence and go on a historic run. There’s been no such response so far in 2021.
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Berube had backed off the players in practice recently, allowing his assistants to do the talking, but that word was coming out of his mouth again after Saturday’s 3-2 loss to Arizona. And two days later, after a grueling practice Monday, he ran through some sprints, otherwise known as a “bag skate.”
This season is the continuation of a difficult year for NHL players. They can’t be themselves. They can’t go out at home or on the road. There are more COVID-19 tests than quizzes on the opponents. There have probably been more Blues games postponed this season than in the history of the organization combined. However, all clubs are going through that, and most of the good ones are managing.
The Blues were playing this season to prove that their performance in the bubble was a fluke. They were going to show that they would be just fine without Alex Pietrangelo. They could play through the injuries — next man up. They were playing for Bobby Plager. None of it has worked.
It hasn’t even worked when things fall in their lap.
Last Wednesday, with the Blues on that aforementioned three-game winning streak, they hosted Colorado at Enterprise Center. The Avalanche didn’t hold a morning skate because they were fatigued after receiving their vaccine shots. A few hours before puck drop, it was confirmed that their starting goalie, Philipp Grubauer, was on the COVID-19 “unavailable to play” list.
In the net would be Devan Dubnyk, who had been acquired four days earlier from San Jose. The same Dubnyk who, while with the Sharks, was 2-3 against the Blues this season with a 4.43 goals-against average and an .845 save percentage. And in Dubnyk’s debut, with a mold of the Avs logo covering up his Sharks mask, the Blues’ offense smelled like mold in a 4-3 loss. If not for a pair of late goals from Hoffman, it would have been lopsided.
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Afterward, Colorado’s fourth-line center Liam O’Brien, he of seven games this season and 24 in his NHL career prior to that night, told reporters: “Guys were hurting a little bit for sure, but we grinded it out. A good team win.”
Hey, the Avs are the top team in the league for a reason, and even with a 34-year-old in net for the first time with his new team, they’re nothing to sneeze at.
So, let’s jump to Saturday’s game in Arizona.
The Blues got on the plane with a one-point lead over the Coyotes in the West Division standings. The Yotes had lost five straight games and were coming off a nine-game, 16-day road trip. And goalie Darcy Kuemper was making his first appearance since March 8, having missed 19 games with a lower-body injury and practiced only twice during that stretch.
The Blues peppered Kuemper with 11 shots in the first period and opened a 2-0 lead. But they had just 11 shots in the final two periods combined and allowed Arizona to come back for a 3-2 win that moved the Coyotes ahead of the Blues and into a playoff spot.
The first two goals from the Coyotes were scored in the second period, a period in which the Blues have now been outscored 53-36 on the season.
“We get the 2-0 lead, and then it seems like we go out in second periods and we’re not aggressive anymore. We sit back and let teams come at us and get on our heels,” Berube said. “Fragile.”
The response of Tyler Bozak was even more befuddling.
“It’s weird: Whenever you get a couple-goal cushion, it’s kind of difficult to keep that aggressiveness,” he said. “It’s something you should do, and the best teams stay aggressive, but it’s a hard thing to do. That’s just the way it goes. That’s hockey.”
That’s also a losing team’s mentality.
Don’t blame Bozak, who scored one of the team’s two goals in that game and has been one of the Blues’ best players lately. But then who’s to blame for the Blues blowing another two-goal lead that led to a loss?
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To me, what the Blues’ issues ultimately come down to is that their best players are not playing remotely well enough.
“One-hundred percent,” Berube said. “They’ve got to be a lot better than they are. I think confidence plays a big part of it. I think their confidence is probably not very high right now. Guys that produce and score are supposed to make plays and things like that. When things aren’t going well and they’re not scoring and not producing, you lose your confidence. That’s probably part of it. For me, it’s simplifying things and making sure that your work ethic and your competitiveness is at an all-time high and you’ll get out of stuff like that.
“There is guys that are doing good things and working, but in the end, it’s not enough out there. We don’t have enough guys that are helping the team win. There’s not enough of them. We need more.”
In the past 14 games, the Schwartz-Schenn-Tarasenko line played 129 minutes, 25 seconds, and despite getting 51.64 percent of their starts in the offensive zone, they were on the ice for four goals for and six goals against.
Whatever the numbers are, it’s not working, and Berube admitted as much when he broke them up in Monday’s practice. He put Bozak in the middle of Schwartz and Tarasenko and Schenn is now centering Hoffman and Jordan Kyrou.
“Schwartz, Schenn and Tarasenko, listen, they’ve been a good line for us for the last couple years, but right now, they’re not getting any production,” Berube said. “I just switched the centermen out. Sometimes you just make a little change like that, can add a spark to both lines.”
Tarasenko has played 19 games this season and has been on the ice for eight five-on-five goals for and 12 against. Lately, he doesn’t look engaged at all.
“I talked to him today about just skating and attacking more and just working more,” Berube said. “Sometimes I think he probably feels like he’s waiting for something to happen, and I think you’ve got to go work for it and you’ve got to get in there. He’s got to get inside the dots more and attack more and be around the net more and all those little things. I think it’ll help him, and I think he’s got to get his nose dirty a little bit.”
Berube says he’s not letting the other two off the hook either.
“I talked to Schenn today about getting in there and getting your nose dirty around the net,” Berube said. “Sometimes you’ve got to get one off your skate or a rebound, some second and third opportunities around the net. This time of year especially, it’s important that you’re getting into those hard areas and you’re getting some greasy goals. That’s really all you can do. They’re working hard — I get that — but we do need them to produce.”
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And let’s not forget the other players who got big contracts — Krug, Binnington and Justin Faulk — who aren’t helping the team find its way. All three of them have six more years on their deals after this season, and they’re part of a group that keeps being referred to as a fragile bunch.
“It’s something we don’t want to hear,” captain Ryan O’Reilly said. “Playing for this Blues team, it’s required that you play hard and you leave it out there every time you touch the ice. Can we say we’ve done that? Probably not. It’s not the way we want to be, but it doesn’t mean we can’t achieve it.”
Can these Blues achieve it this season? If not, then Armstrong missed an opportunity to improve the franchise’s future at the trade deadline. He could have gotten assets for pending unrestricted free agents Schwartz and Hoffman that would have helped replenish the prospect pool while simultaneously trying to keep the championship window slightly open.
Did the GM make a mistake? Perhaps. He didn’t have many options because of the salary cap. But he believed in what the Blues might do, not what they are doing.
I did, too.
(Top photo: Norm Hall / Getty Images)
