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2/6, Blues vs. Red Wings - Recap: Time to Get a Little Desperate

February 7, 2013, 11:32 PM ET [13 Comments]
Chip McCleary
St Louis Blues Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
My 3 stars of the game

1. Cory Emmerton, DET. 1 goal, 1 assist.
2. Damian Brunner, DET. 1 goal, had a couple other decent chances.
3. Drew Miller, DET. 2 assists.

Honorable mention: Petr Mrazek (28 saves on 29 shots; maybe deserving of a star but I didn’t see a lot of “tough” saves out of him).

In all honesty, no one really stood out in a positive way on either side for me – so tonight’s 3 stars are kind of stat-based. I thought about moving Mrazek up, but in general goalies seem to get the nod if their stats look good – and I want netminders to have really earned their star via hard saves and the good kind of “… and if he wasn’t in net, …” play. Mrazek was OK tonight but not great IMO – so he gets an honorable mention here.

***

The good – again, not a long list.
-- Pietrangelo with the PP goal. That’s 3 from him on the season.
-- Sobotka had his typical game.
-- Steen showed signs of life tonight offensively.
-- The PK was perfect tonight (a whole 1-for-1).

The bad
It would be easy to say “everything” again, but there’s a couple things that were just so bad, they need to be called out.
-- David Perron. I don’t care if he did draw a major on Franzen (by taking a minor himself), he had an absolutely crappy game tonight. No sense of team play, completely selfish beyond fault, completely apparent what he was going to do whenever he got the puck (which made it easy for the defense to shut him and the rest of his line down), … I said it a few games back, I’ll say it again – he needs to sit in the press box.
-- Kris Russell. I get why he’s still in the lineup, but after tonight it should be painfully evident he should take a seat. Outmuscled repeatedly in his defensive zone, did little to nothing offensively, screwed up his assignment on 2 Red Wings goals, … we need actual defensive play, and he simply can’t provide it.
-- Brian Elliott. Not good again tonight – and if Halak is going to be out beyond this weekend, he needs to find his ‘A’ game ASAP. Hell, if he’d just find his ‘B’ game that would be an improvement on what we’ve seen recently.

***

Miscellaneous thoughts

-- Is it time to be concerned now? A little bit – and with a (currently) 7-1-1 Anaheim team coming in on Saturday, this has a chance to get away from the boys quickly.

-- Let me repeat myself, in case it’s not clear from above: Kris Russell and David Perron should go sit in the press box for a game. Maybe a couple. Ian Cole should come back from exile and go up along either Pietrangelo or Shattenkirk as the defensive conscience, while the forward lines morph to something like:

Oshie – Berglund – Tarasenko
McDonald – Backes – Stewart
Schwartz – Steen – D’Agostini
Reaves – Nichol – Sobotka

That’s not really an ideal place for Steen, but I think putting D’Agostini on the 4th line is wasting him needlessly. The fact is, we have a pretty good 4th line – we just have guys who (other than Jamie Langenbrunner) have no business being on it, and we need those other guys to mesh again and start creating chances and generating consistent pressure that leads to goals.

-- Credit to the Red Wings for playing a (mostly) composed game tonight. They weathered the first 4 minutes, came down and scored, and then just choked the life out of the Blues as the game went on. It wasn't completely Detroit hockey from the glory days (or even the elite days of the last few years) but it was more than effective enough to get the job done.

-- That said, Franzen's spear on Perron was just a stupid penalty (even if he did get boarded by Perron in a similarly but not quite so equal stupid penalty). No, it doesn't merit additional suspension - so don't even ask the league to review it. If anything, the Blues should have declined it because when the game went 4-on-4, you knew it was a matter of time before the Red Wings scored again.

-- It’s kind of hard to chip the puck into the offensive zone if your plan is to throw it in, then try to skate along the boards and let yourself get checked there while the other forwards are on the other side of the ice. That kind of kills any speed you might have and makes the entire play less effective. I’m not saying that the Blues might want to rethink how they do that, … I’m just saying that when it doesn't work the first 27 times don’t work, maybe it’s time to try something different.

-- Same thing goes for trying to stickhandle in when the opposition has 3 guys lined up across the blueline. Chances are, it's not going to work because one guy is going to pressure you, the middle guy is going to hang high to cover and be ready to defend in case you get by, and the far guy is waiting to see if you're dumb enough to try and make a cross-ice pass. Again, maybe there's a better way to attack that.

-- At least they’re not doing what they used to do in the Davis Payne era: skate the puck in down the right side, pull up at the half boards, then sit with the puck and wait for the defense to come knock us off of it.

-- While the stat line says we were 33-31 on faceoffs, David Backes was 7-11 on the night in yet another pitiful display. More troubling, he, Berglund, and Steen combined to go 3-8 in the defensive zone – and Berglund lost a draw that quickly turned into a goal by Brunner. We flat out have to get better in this area.

-- And yes, I know my lines above have Backes centering McDonald. I’d be totally fine having McDonald (who historically has been pretty good on faceoffs, though he’s under 50% this year) take the draws and then shift over to the wing as soon as possible.

-- Tonight highlighted why Jackman needs to be a 5/6 defenseman. He's slow - not quite Larry Murphy slow, but he's not going to beat a lot of guys to the puck at this point in his career. Hell, he almost got beat back to the puck by Brunner on an icing call. The one thing he has going for him is that (usually) he's pretty sound positionally - but I don't know that I even like him playing 20 minutes a game. I think I'd be fine with him in the 16-17 range, especially if we could get the #6 guy to play 13-15 minutes a night.

-- Phil Kessel has a goal, Shea Weber has a point, … I’m OK with Alex Steen’s 7 assists, but he’s due for a goal soon, right?

-- BTW, in response to Tuesday night’s question: Weber had a point before Kessel scored a goal – both in terms of when during the game he scored and in real world time.

***

Next up: Saturday, vs. Anaheim. The Ducks will have a road game in Dallas tomorrow night, so no “we’re tired, they had a day to rest” excuses from the boys in blue. After tonight, they have to know they need a ‘W’ because after that it’s the Kings at home on Monday and then 3 games on the road – starting with a return trip to Joe Louis on Wednesday.

Tomorrow: the ex-Blues Report, where Blues fans get a chance to gloat about (or lament over … or maybe even both) the guys who are no longer.
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