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The Blues had an opportunity to start to take control of their playoff destiny and fumbled it away without even taking an average hit. As has been the case for most of the season, Thursday’s game again exposed the Blues inability to finish chances, poor decision making, lazy plays and crippling goaltending.
Once again the Blues started a home game, dominating their opponent. They generated 6 shots and 13 shot attempts in the 1st 8 minutes while only allowing 3 shot attempts against. Of course, once again they had nothing to show for it. A number of us were thinking, here we go again and you wonder if the team starts thinking similarly.
Less than two minutes later, the Avalanche got on the board with a goal from Nathan MacKinnon on an error filled play by the Blues The play actually starts at the Avalanche blue line when Alex Pietrangelo makes a terrible decision to try and forecheck a puck for which he really has no chance of getting or even pressuring. To add insult on the play, Pietrangelo falls down on the play.
Even with this poor decision, the Blues are in decent shape as the play comes back into their own end with three forwards and defensemen Colton Parayko left to cover three Avalanche players. Unfortunately, Patrik loses track of MacKinnon and moves to cover the same player Ivan Barbashev is coming back to cover, leaving MacKinnon free for the quality chance and the goal. And with that, the tide of the game turned.
Many times this season the Blues have been in good shape getting back in their own end only to completely blow the defensive zone coverage and allow a goal. Is it coaching? Is it the changing line combinations? Is it players simply not executing? Who knows for certain but it certainly is killing this team at times.
Less than 3 minutes later, MacKinnon scored his 2nd of the game helped by another example of Jake Allen’s rebound and puck tracking difficulty and a big mental lapse by Brayden Schenn when he completely loses track of MacKinnon, getting caught puck watching.
In fairness, there were a lot of sticks attempting to deflect the point shot, making Allen’s job more difficult but he has had trouble with rebound placement and point shot tracking for quite some time. In the NHL, especially given the game situation, that shot has to be caught and corralled for the whistle rather than leaving the dangerous rebound in the crease. In a way, the goal looks more like a play from my beer league games than an NHL game.
Midway through the 2nd period, the Blues got some life when Joel Edmundson scored on a seeing-eye shot from the point, getting his 7th goal of the year.
Unfortunately for Blues fans, a poor play by Berglund, a very lazy change, and very poor goaltending would allow the Avalanche to extend the lead back to two with less than four minutes left in the 2nd period. Watch the coasting to the bench on the play.
As a fan, this is disappointing to see in a one goal game against a team you have to catch in a close playoff race. It gets compounded when Allen plays the situation extremely poorly, looking more like me than a NHL goalie. Vince Dunn deserves credit for hustling off the bench and getting back to cut down Mikko Rantanen’s angle. Essentially, Dunn takes away a lot of options from Rantanen’s shot selection, making the play a lot easier for Allen but Allen fails to process that part of equation and goes down unnecessarily early and forward, allowing the shot to go off Allen and into the net.
Rantanen would add an empty net goal, ending the game 4-1 even though the Blues outshot the Avalanche 45-23.
All is not lost yet though with the Avalanche and Flames losing last night while the Stars lost a 3rd period lead to the Senators and then losing in overtime but the road is going to be tough for the Blues to make the playoffs. Based on the teams’ current points percentages, the Blues would finish 3 points out of a playoff spot. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, of the 8 teams in the Western conference vying for the last 5 playoff spots, the Blues only face the Sharks and Avalanche once.
The Blues cannot afford to lose to the Rangers tonight and lost more ground. The Rangers have won 2 games in a row and are 5-3-2 in their last 10 games but have been poor on the road this season winning only 12 of 34 games.
The Rangers don’t have a single player over 50 points as Mats Zuccarello leads the team with 48 points in 70 games. Alex Pietrangelo would be 2nd on their team in points.
Given that the Blues played fairly well overall against Colorado, I expect the lineup to be the same.
Forwards
Jaden Schwartz - Brayden Schenn – Vladimir Tarasenko
Alexander Steen - Kyle Brodziak – Patrik Berglund
Dmitrij Jaskin - Vladimir Sobotka – Tage Thompson
Nikita Soshnikov – Ivan Barbashev – Chris Thorburn
Defense
Carl Gunnarsson - Alex Pietrangelo
Vince Dunn - Colton Parayko
Joel Edmundson – Robert Bortuzzo
Goalie
Jake Allen
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers
Nashville Predator's Paul McCann,
Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and
Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others will donate in their name.
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