St. Louis Blues Morning Links: Capital Punishment

Good morning Blues fans. Well, it might not be very good after last night’s game, but we’re all still here and breathing. The team might not be, but that’s another matter.

The St. Louis Blues continue to frustrate, flummox and fail. We go into each game with renewed hope that we will see a good performance and sometimes we get it, but most times we do not lately.

That was exactly the case against the Washington Capitals. The Blues were fully capable of beating Washington if they came out with their A-game and got performances like we saw in San Jose or Anaheim.

If they did not give that kind of effort and get a complete team game, from the goaltenders to the players, from the coaches to the towel guy, they were going to get blown out. Sadly, especially for those of us in attendance, we saw the latter.

The Blues came out well enough. They had several good shifts, were forechecking with purpose and looked to be taking it to the Capitals.

Even as a Jake Allen supporter, I have to call a snake a snake. Allen was not sharp on the first goal of the game and needed to make a save. It was a good shot, but from a tough angle, the Snake needs to keep that out of the net.

He did not. The Blues let it affect them and they never really recovered.

They seemed to gain some energy after Jaden Schwartz‘ early second period goal, but there was not enough. The couple shifts after a goal are when you should be a shark to blood and instead we saw a Blues team trying not to make a mistake.

When you play like that, you make mistakes. Jake should not have over-committed on what he thought would be a cross ice pass for the third goal, but there was absolutely no tracking of T.J. Oshie on defense either. You cannot just let him stroll into the slot unpunished and scoop one into the net like a Sunday stroll in the park.

Things just fell apart from there. Carl Gunnarsson falls on his butt to give up a breakaway for the fourth. Carter Hutton gets beat on his first shot faced once reentering the game and the Blues had no answers.

They got some good goals from Alexander Steen late in the game. Hopefully that can get him rolling a little bit. However, the Capitals had turned it off, so there’s no real way of knowing if any true positives can be gleaned.

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This is who the Blues are. We need to start facing that fact.

At this point, the best we can hope for is to slink into the playoffs and hope for some magic. It is just sad that a team whose A-game can beat anyone in the league is capable of such depths when it comes to poor play as well.

Here are your St. Louis Blues Morning Links to get your day started off right.

My, oh my how the world turns. The Blues offseason was spent with tons of chatter about a Kevin Shattenkirk trade to this team or that. There were rumors of deals and some squandered because of the player himself. Fast forward six months and the defenseman may have changed his tune due to better than expected play from possible trade partners. (My NHL Trade Rumors)

Some attribute it to the poor play of the rest of the scorers, but one of the Blues hottest forwards the last few weeks has been Patrik Berglund. He is one of the hotter scorers in the league over that span though and might be finally buying what he’s been sold for so long. (STLToday)

There was a lot of praise given the the recent defensive pairing of Alex Pietrangelo and Colton Parayko. Don’t expect to see that pair again any time soon. Following the poor game against Ottawa, the Blues fell back to the old standby of Petro and Bouwmeester and it seems we’ll see that for the road trip as well. (STLToday)

The All-Star Game has evolved over the years in attempts to draw in new fans to that particular game. The skills competition has added and subtracted as well, but there are always the old standbys for a fun evening. (NHL)

Fighting may never be outlawed in the NHL, but it is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Don’t tell that to the owner of the Florida Panthers. Apparently, the top dog with the cats got involved in some fisticuffs late in the summer. (ESPN)

Have a great day Blues fans.