Last night the Blues defeated the Calgary Flames 6-4, overcoming some shaky goaltending and getting their only win on their three game road trip through western Canada.
Coach Ken Hitchcock’s line changes appeared to click with the Blues scoring the most they have in any game this season though half of the goal scoring was from two power play goals and an empty net goal.
David Perron had his best game of the season, netting a hat trick and adding a helper while firing six shots on net. Alex Pietrangelo had two assists and played a game Blues high 24:19. Patrik Berglund, Paul Stastny and Alexander Steen added goals.
Jake Allen was a bit shaky in net, giving up a poor to Michael Ferland and at least one other goal that appeared stoppable and posting an 85% save percentage. More on Allen later.
The Blues team defense did an excellent job shutting down the Flames young guns, holding Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan pointless and hanging a -4 on each of them.
In looking at the last few games and the season to date, I noted the following:
- The Blues have killed 19 penalties in a row and sit atop the NHL with a 95% PK success ratio.
- The Blues have scored first in every game but opening night, now 5 in a row.
- The Blues team is strong, allowing the 3rd fewest shots against per game, less than 1 shot behind the league leading New York Rangers.
- The Blues 5v5 goal differential is -1.
- The Blues are winning the 1st 2 period battles, scoring 50% more than their opponents.
- The Blues are only even in 3rd period scoring and have been outscored in OT (only 1 goal against).
- Joel Edmundson is averaging over 16 minutes a game compared to Bortuzzo or Gunnarsson who are both less than 13 minutes.
- Steen still leads the forwards in ice time and is 1:12 more per game than last year.
- Stastny is on Steen’s heals and up 2:12 from last year.
- Tarasenko is 1 minute above last year’s average.
In reviewing how Allen has performed in the number one role so far, my review found that he has been terrible in 5v5 save percentage, only stopping 87.2% of those shots. For reference, that is even lower than struggling Brian Elliott’s 87.5%. Interestingly, Allen has stopped 96.3% of the shots faced while the team is short handed. Allen has been sharp to start games, saving almost 97% of the shots in the first period. His save percentage then declines to 85.3% in the second period and 89.6% in the third period. Part of this might be team play as the Blues. The Blues shot differential is +19 for the first period, +23 for the second period, and only +5 in the third period. It’s too early to be overly concerned by this but it is something that we may want to keep an eye on.
Up next for the Blues will be the Flames again on Tuesday at home.
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 donate in their name.
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