St. Louis Blues: One Play Summarizes Blues Defensive Woes
The St. Louis Blues have all but proven that goaltending is not their main issue the last couple games. It is becoming easier and easier to see the breakdowns along the way.
The St. Louis Blues pretty much showed that the goaltenders are not the biggest issue when they lost 5-3 to the Winnipeg Jets. Pheonix Copley played reasonably well, but the team’s continued defensive breakdowns gave him no help.
It did not aid things that the Blues offense could not muster any support until late. We’ll keep the focus on the defense for now though because offense can come and go. Defensive effort should be constant.
We need look no further than one play against the Washington Capitals to show the team’s poor form. It was, coincidentally, T.J. Oshie‘s goal that was a complete and utter breakdown by the blue liners.
First, everything starts to break down in the first couple seconds. If you pause the video at two or three seconds in you see one of the biggest problems the Blues defenders have.
Robert Bortuzzo is responsible for tracking the initial puck carrier into the zone. While it is Alex Ovechkin, Bortuzzo does what all Blues defenders (forwards and defensemen) are guilty of and that’s just waving the stick.
Going against one of the league’s premier scorers, some form can be forgiven. However, it is still an example of lazy defending and not staying on your toes.
Blues defenders are constantly guilty of getting beat by being flat footed and forced to attempt weak poke checks that rarely work. More times than not, the offensive player either makes their way around them, gets a pass off or draw a penalty.
The second one happens on this play. Ovechkin drops it off to an unmarked Nicklas Backstrom and things break down further.
Now, we press on for the next two to three seconds.
If you watch from the start until about the five second mark, you see Alex Pietrangelo forced into a mistake. This one is not of his own making, but it still results in a goal.
Pietrangelo tells Bortuzzo to take the attacker and glides over to take away the slot. Normally this would be the wise choice. Ultimately it fails, but Petro is left between a rock and a hard place.
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If he stays out wide to take Oshie out of the play, he would get blasted for letting Backstrom alone in the slot. So, he takes the smartest course of action and it just does not happen to work this time since Backstrom waits and dishes it off.
Now if you let the video roll, you see Oshie get the pass and score. Of course, Jake Allen had over-committed thinking the pass was going to Ovechkin. He was caught out of position for Oshie’s shot and given the brunt of the blame.
Go back to the beginning though. Keep your eyes on the bottom of the screen. Oshie is pretty much all alone skating along the wall. Then watch the bottom left corner and you see David Perron taking a stroll through the neutral zone.
Perron has done a lot this season to prove he is a more complete player. His improved play has shown on the scoresheet and he has also proven how changed he is by becoming a regular on the team’s penalty kill.
On this play he shows the Blues biggest problem in defending as a five man unit. All it takes is one break the other way and the forwards or the defenders caught up ice just sort of glide back.
Pause around the five or six second mark and Perron has gotten himself close enough to make you think he was not fast enough to make up the ground. However he either never took his eye off the puck to see Oshie as a defensive assignment or simply had no plan to put the effort forth to catch up.
So Perron has pretty much given up on the entire thing and the player he could have helped take out of the play.
Even then, he is not the only one to blame. Going back to the start of the play, switch your focus back to Pietrangelo.
Pietrangelo keeps backing in, as just about all Blues defenders do these days. By doing this, he allows Ovechkin to set a pick play on him.
There is basically no way Petro can help out against Oshie because he was not strong enough to keep himself in the play. He ends up behind Ovechkin, boxed out, and allowing Oshie enough time to fumble the puck in the slot, recover it and score.
This is just one play, but it embodies everything wrong with the team’s defensive play this season. The forwards are too slow or lazy to fight their way back into the play and stop the break.
Defenders keep backing in and ceding too much ground to the attackers. George Patton used to say he could not stomach fighting for the same ground twice, but the Blues don’t fight for it once some times.
As shown by Pietrangelo’s movements, even the right decision ends up being wrong due to the ineffectiveness of others.
Allen does not do himself any favors. He tries to read too far into the play and as a goaltender, when you cheat, you often get beat.
However, there were so many things that could have gone differently before the goal was actually scored.
This is not an isolated incident. It happens multiple times per game and sometimes the Blues are fortunate enough not to be scored on.
Too many times lately they are being scored on. The team seems unwilling or unable to change it.
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