Tough road loss by the St. Louis Blues to the Minnesota Wild on Sunday. Tough because they need the points to keep up with Nashville and company for the final two playoff berths in the Western Conference. Tough because what would otherwise be an easy portion of their schedule featured back-to-back road games: Minnesota rested comfortably at home on Saturday night, watching St. Louis tire themselves out against Columbus on their plasma TVs.
Not a great choice by young coach Davis Payne–yes, younger than me–to go to the well once again with netminder Chris Mason. On back to back nights, riding him for a tenth straight game. We all know that no goalie plays every game, and Ty Conklin is a good backup after all. Even if you have Lundqvist or Miller, this is the classic spot to put in your backup (even if it’s Alex Auld or Patrick Lalime).
A shame, because prior to that, the Blues had taken care of business against the Islanders–barely–and Blue Jackets–impressively, in their desperate chase to get one of the last tickets to the postseason.
I had the chance to take in Thursday’s 2-1 shootout victory against New York from press row at Nassau Coliseum (Thank you, Islanders!).
A few quotes:
-During the second intermission, St. Louis GM John Davidson made no bones about characterizing the game as “very sloppy”.
-Defenseman Barret Jackman seemed to concur with JD’s assessment after the game: “The first ten minutes of the game, we weren’t ourselves. A lot of turnovers, just a lot of chasing. And then, at the end of the first period, I thought we played pretty well until that goal – kind of a lucky play, they hacked one over Mason’s shoulder. It was scrambly, a lot of turnovers, a lot of indecision.”
-Goalie Chris Mason commented on the Blues playing after a prolonged five days between games: “I personally don’t like that, but…every team has to deal with their own little quirks in their schedule…We got some practice time in with the new coach, so that’s okay, but I’d rather just play games.” “We had a little bit of rust in certain areas of our game…that happens when you have a few days off.” “With the teams winning around us, we have to keep pace, and fight it out until the end.” “It was a bit scrambly, but we got the job done. That’s all that matters.”
Coach Davis Payne seemed to point to an inconsistency of effort between lines–”There were some groups that were taking it to them early and I also thought there were some groups that were having a little bit of trouble in their own zone with the kind of pressure that the Islanders were putting you under”–as well as poor execution when the effort was there: “Probably the execution offensively wasn’t as clean as we would like. We put a lot of pucks to the net, but didn’t generate many second opportunities based on where we put that puck. Credit their goaltender, but our power play needed to be a little bit sharper…in the third period. We’ve got to find a way to put one of those in there.”
-T.J. Oshie felt good going into the shootout–”I’ve been in quite a few over the past couple years, so the nerves kind of went away this year after the first couple. So I’m just going there, confident, with one of my go-to moves”–even though not having seen his Eastern Conference opponent added uncertainty: “I didn’t know in the shootouts…if [Biron] poke checks, or how he played the shootout.”
If play in regulation and overtime were indecisive, the shootout certainly looked very decisive. Both teams featured shooters with solid career numbers, but Biron’s weak .536 career save percentage presaged the Isles’ demise.
Fast forward a few days. Realistically, is St. Louis out of the playoff hunt? Not quite. Stay tuned for my Puck Prospectus column this week…