The St. Louis Blues had found themselves some key ingredients of late to come together and give them some life.
There’s been good goaltending, solid defending, and they’ve been filling the net up after a dry spell.
And for the seventh time this season, the Blues had an opportunity at a three-game winning streak.
A valiant effort in the third fell short, however, and the Columbus Blue Jackets came away with a wild 6-4 win at Nationwide Arena on Saturday.
Brayden Schenn, Jordan Kyrou and Cam Fowler each had a goal and an assist, and the Blues (19-18-4) woke up in the third period and scored all their goals but also allowed four in a game that didn’t have much until the final 20 minutes.
Let’s break down the Three Takeaways:
* Valiant pushback in third overcome by shoddy play early — On Friday in a 4-0 win against the Ottawa Senators, the Blues played a near flawless game. Their sticks were breaking up plays, they moved the puck cleanly and fluidly, they created with effort plays and got the goaltending needed for a solid win.
Saturday, particularly in the first 40 minutes, it was too sloppy with the puck, breakouts were seldomly clean and the net front defense wasn’t good enough.
As a result, the Blues were playing catch-up the entire game.
The first two goals came off lost D-zone face-offs, one late in the first period and ensuing net front coverage by Dmitri Voronkov and another early in the second off another D-zone face-off lost that resulted in a Kirill Marchenko power-play goal that was unfortunately deflected in off Colton Parayko’s stick:
Columbus’ third goal was as a result of another lost face-off, this time in the O-zone with the start of a power-play, a breakout with Mikael Pyyhtia scoring shorthanded to make it 3-0, and an Adam Fantilli goal off a long bank pass that wasn’t covered well and ensuing shot from the right circle:
These are just examples of poor play we haven’t seen from the Blues in a while.
* Blues are allergic to three-game winning streaks — If you want to be a playoff team, which the Blues continue to insist that they can be, it’s not going to happen unless they can sustain some lengthy winning streaks.
Putting together three straight wins has been worse for them than pulling teeth.
For the seventh time this season in an attempt to string together three straight wins, the Blues failed.
They are now 0-6-1 in those situations with results as follows:
* Opened season with 3-2 win against Seattle Kraken and 5-4 overtime win against San Jose…