It’s not said often, at least this season, where the St. Louis Blues looked this decisive against an opponent and lost.
But that’s exactly what happened on Sunday afternoon at Canada Life Centre, when the Blues dominated most categories, yet fell 3-2 to the Winnipeg Jets in a critical game in the push for the playoffs.
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These are the kinds of games that are an absolute must. Call them the classic four-point games (sorry, Andy Murray, but they are — IYKYK).
The Blues put on a push from start to finish, but three critical errors all proved costly, and the Jets (28-28-10), who were tied with the Blues (27-30-10) in points coming into the game, not pull two ahead with a game in hand and gives St. Louis now five teams it has to jump over for that second wild card into the Western Conference with just 15 games to play and a six-point deficit coming in (pending other results Sunday night).
Dalibor Dvorsky and Dylan Holloway scored for the Blues, who outshot the Jets 31-16. Jordan Binnington made 13 saves.
Let’s look at Sunday’s observations:
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* Falling behind by two on two preventable situations — The Blues started this game on time and were actually playing well, with territorial edge but something we’ll get to later on (net front traffic). However, the Jets broke out with one of their few transitions out of the zone, but the Jake Neighbours-Pavel Buchnevich-Jordan Kyrou line was slow in tracking back on the play, and it backed the Theo Lindstein-Colton Parayko D-pair in.
The puck was coming in on the lefthand side, played into the oncoming D-man Haydn Fleury, who beat Binnington with a shortside wrister that you’d like to see stopped, but it could have all been preventable with more desperation staying connected by the forward group, and it came on Winnipeg’s first shot at 2:31:
And against a defensively stingy team, which showed on Saturday in a 3-1 win against the Colorado Avalanche, it can absorb anything and everything but be structured enough to take away what can fuel your success.
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And the Blues were at nearly three minutes to 42 seconds of offensive zone time, but another play that allowed a breakaway goal from Mark Scheifele at 7:51 made it 2-0, when the Jets center scooted by a puck that hopped past Pius Suter, and Cam Fowler was caught flat-footed on the play thinking Suter was going to get the puck, and Fowler could not recover to perhaps dive in and poke the puck away. Instead, Scheifele was off to the races from the right and went forehand, backhand upstairs on Binnington:
So you’re chasing a game you had no business chasing on two preventable plays.
* Blues pushed even harder but needed more net front — The Blues gave the Jets little to nothing moving forward, and through two periods, the O-zone possession time was 6:28-2:51, a massive edge by the visitors.
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Here’s the issue, something that’s been problematic for most of this season: net front presence.
No offense to Eric Comrie, who came into the game with a plus-3.00 goals-against average and below a .900 save percentage, but he is now 4-0-0 against the Blues in his career for a reason: not enough bodies at the net taking his eyes away.
The Blues generated 59 shot attempts and 31 on goal, but in my view, Comrie was able to see too many pucks. There was not enough traffic from the dots in, particularly in and around the crease, or else this could have — and should have — been a different outcome.
But you know why Winnipeg had an 8-7 edge in high danger chances? It’s because the Jets made a more concerted effort to get to the front of the net.
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* Another critical mistake after dominating — The Blues pushed and pushed and pushed, and finally broke through when Dvorsky, a healthy scratch Friday against the Edmonton Oilers, was at the net and finished a Jonatan Berggren pass to make it 2-1 at 5:17 of the third period (BTW, Berggren is such an underrated passer of the puck):
It was early enough that you could just sense the Jets were sort of holding on for dear life.
The territorial edge was growing. The Blues were controlling the puck for large swaths but again, didn’t make a concerted effort to get to the interior.
Then came the grave error, the let-out for the Jets.
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Suter, who typically has been responsible, was getting called for an offensive zone penalty and the Jets were playing with an extra attacker, Philip Broberg and Logan Mailloux were on the ice playing a high line. Connor is coming off the bench. That has to be recognized, and it’s another breakaway and another goal, the dagger goal, at 11:53 to make it 3-1 and eliminate all the momentum the Blues generated:
Now the Jets can really lock it down, and the Blues, to their credit, kept pushing and got it back to within one again ta 3-2 when Holloway was at — you guessed it — the net front and give the Blues some life with 50.7 ticks left on the clock:
However, there would be no repeat of the ‘Winnipeg Miracle’ like Game 7 last May for the Blues, who now are off until Wednesday when they face the Calgary Flames.
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According to naturalstattrick, the Blues had a 53-24 edge in Corsi-for/against, 28-11 edge in scoring chances for/against and 11-4 in high danger for/against. Kind of tells you the difference in play.
It was a solid seven-game point streak (6-0-1), and five straight wins on the road but to come away with nothing in this game, that one stings.
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