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Blues win "expected goals for" in Florida but lose the actual games

October 17, 2017, 1:43 AM ET [13 Comments]
Jason Millen
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After starting out as the best team in the NHL with a 4-0 start, the Blues have lost two games in a row, both in Florida.

On Thursday night, the Blues fell to the Panthers 5-2. The Blues started poorly, not even registering a shot until almost 11 minutes into the period and an undisciplined penalty from Scottie Upshall. They rebounded in the second half of the 1st period, ending the period scoreless and outshooting the Panthers 13-11.

The 2nd period started with a flurry of activity with Paul Stastny getting it started with a power play goal less than a minute into the period. Of course the lead was short lived as the Panthers tied the game less than 20 seconds later. A little over a minute later the Blues gave up a short-handed goal. The Panthers would add a power play goal later in the period to go up 3-1 even though the Blues were outshooting the Panthers, 29-22.

Three minutes into the third period, Jaden Schwartz comes in on a partial breakaway but is stopped by Roberto Luongo. Less than 15 seconds later, Aaron Ekblad scores to make it 4-1, putting the game out of reach. Vince Dunn scored his first NHL goal with just over a minute remaining.

As is the trend this year in Blues games, the team that had the higher expected goals for lost the game as the Blues ended with almost a half a goal better xGF.
On Saturday night, the Blues traveled to Tampa Bay and played a very strong first period against the lightning, outshooting the Lightning 15-9 but were unable to get a puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Tyler Johnson broke the tie with a power play goal a little over 8 minutes into the 2nd period after a Blues too many men on the ice penalty.

About six and a half minutes into the third, a bouncing puck eventually made its way to Nikita Kucherov who made it a 2-0 game. Vladimir Tarasenko scored with about 3:30 left in the game before the game ended 2-1. By all accounts, the Blues rebounded with a strong away game but didn’t get the result they desired.

Again, the expected goals statistic would tell you the Blues should have won by over half of a goal, making the xGF 1-5 in the predicting Blues games this season.

All things considered, a 4-2 start without Alexander Steen and Jay Bouwmeester can’t be seen as too bad. It sounds like Steen will either be back on Wednesday or this weekend but Bouwmeester isn’t even skating yet.

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 o
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