The St. Louis Blues are having a tough time winning hockey games and will likely fall further down in the standings if they keep up this run. They have a record of 3-6-1 through their last 10 games. With a significant 8-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Nov. 9, their second game where they allowed eight goals this season, the Blues only show signs of worsening. However, for the benefit of the doubt, I will say they have also been dealing with many injuries to key players that have hurt them badly in crucial areas of their lineup. Regardless, three things hold that the Blues are doing wrong.
Not Scoring Enough and Allowing Too Many Goals
In the NHL, the best teams score more goals than they allow by having a good balance of defense and offense. Right now, the Blues don’t have either of those, and it isn’t terrific to look at when you see how deep they are in the league in both goals against and goals for. The Blues rank 27th in the league in goals (43), which is terrible for a team that loaded up in the offseason with some much-needed goal-scoring depth. On top of that, the Blues also have the seventh-worst goals-against totals (59) in the NHL so far, and I’d imagine it would be a lot worse if they didn’t have Jordan Binnington or Joel Hofer as their goaltenders.
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This problem is tough to tackle because they don’t have many trading options and can’t afford to do that now. The only goal is to hope that their team, as it is right now, can play through this performance drought for the next three or four weeks until their top guys on the injured reserve (IR) slowly recover and come back into the lineup. Recently, Pierre-Olivier Joseph was lost from their lineup for an expected two games.
Also, with Dylan Holloway recovering from his scary shot to the neck with a puck and Matthew Joseph fully returning after suffering a lower-body injury on Oct. 26, things are slowly coming back together. Had they not overprepared with lots of depth in the off-season, this would’ve been a different outcome. However, the Blues’ prime performers, Jordan Kyrou, Pavel Buchnevich, Colton Parayko, and Justin Faulk, still have more work to do as the only remaining healthy superstars on the roster.
Goaltending Being Hung Out to Dry
The Blues goaltending tandem of Binnington and Hofer should’ve been one of the best in the league this season and started well. However, that is…
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