St. Louis Blues Morning Links: Befuddled By Boston
Good morning Blues fans! Another loss last night ruined the possibility of getting any kind of positive momentum heading into the road trip.
The St. Louis Blues failed to capitalize on some good momentum gained from a 4-3 win over the Dallas Stars by laying another egg. That is more of a figurative statement of course since the Blues did manage three goals against Boston, but it was never that close.
A 5-3 score doesn’t sound all that terrible. It was pretty bad though.
The St. Louis Blues simply cannot win back-to-back games right now. The entire month of December and January to this point has seen the Blues trade results back and forth.
The maddening thing is there is not consistency game to game. It’s becoming a broken record.
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The Blues play like a championship caliber team one game and a team that deserves to miss the playoffs another. They spill their guts in losses and have bad performances in wins. You can honestly never tell what Blues team you are going to get.
At this point, it is affecting even the players. Following the team’s loss to Boston, captain Alex Pietrangelo sounded legitimately upset with himself and the entire team. He has right to be given the lack of any tangible sustained success, whether on the scoreboard or just within the team spirit.
That has been the hardest thing to stomach. Losing is one thing, but to question the integrity of the team and their efforts or their willingness to be coached or understand is very disheartening.
Maybe it’s the coach. It does not make sense for the coach with the fourth highest win totals to suddenly lose his ability, but maybe he has.
Maybe it’s the goaltender. I’ve been a staunch supporter of Jake Allen and think he can be good. However, whether it’s luck or not he has struggled with his confidence and seems to expect bad things to happen at this point.
We know it is the defense. The Blues are actually in the top 10 in scoring, but they’ve allowed more goals than they can score. That is not acceptable in any way.
We all complain about this and that as fans, but this team is starting to take the life out of things. Even writing about them seems tedious at times because it is the same old story. There are only so many adjectives you can use or ways to describe lackluster play combined with low effort levels.
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I can only say the team needs a spark or better figure something out so many times. The Blues are the ones that need to do it.
We had to watch Brett Hull go elsewhere to win. Nobody wants the same thing to happen to Vladimir Tarasenko.
This team needs to play for one another. Forget the coaching situation. Help each other. Help your goaltenders. Find a way to play together instead of trying to force it.
Here are your St. Louis Blues morning links to get your day started off right.
It’s one thing to read it in print, but another to hear the words from the mouths of the people that said them. That said, here are the postgame interviews with the leadership of the Blues themselves and it was not sugar coated. (Blues)
In news that isn’t a surprise to anyone, the NHL selected Vladimir Tarasenko to the All-Star team. He’s raking up the times named to the exhibition and it remains a positive accolade. (Arch Authority)
The past week saw the Chicago Wolves have their winning streak snapped. That does not mean that positive things have eluded them in recent times. If anything, they are more consistent than their NHL counterparts. (Wolves)
As fans of the Blues we might have hoped to see Tage Thompson in a more prominent role for the gold medal winning United States. Still, he played a solid role. Showing what kind of player he was he made a quick decision about his immediate playing future that should surprise nobody given his love of the game. (Hartford Courant)
The Toronto Maple Leafs continued their revolving door of goaltenders yesterday. While they are still set on their starter, it’s a new backup that they sought and hope to have found. (ESPN)
There is no denying the Chicago Blackhawks are flush with talent. That said, they seem to get more attention than they are worth sometimes and that includes All-Star nominations. In a season where the team has not been great, but consistent, they still end up with four members in that game. (NHL)
Have a great day Blues fans.
