Monday December 12: St. Louis Blues versus Nashville Predators

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What’s the point of it all? Are the St. Louis Blues a good hockey team? These questions have baffled humanity’s greatest philosophers for centuries. On Monday, the Blues took on the Nashville Predators in the last contest of a three game home-stand. This matchup was a bit of an oddity. Seeing as how this game featured the 2022-23 St. Louis Blues, you’d expect numerous defensive breakdowns accompanied by a feeling of passive disappointment and at least four goals-against off a defenseman’s stick. But not tonight. It took until overtime for a team to score and as fortune had it, that team was the Blues. Not the prettiest way to win a hockey game, but two points is two points.

Keys Takeaways: 

Don’t overreact: When your team is as middling as the Blues have been this season, it can be easy to overreact to victories. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good win, it’s just not a great win. In some respects, this feels more like a Predators loss rather than a Blues victory. Nashville struggled immensely in this game and it still took overtime for the game to be decided. The Blues have the 32nd ranked penalty-kill in the NHL this season and the Preds went 0/4 on the power-play. The Blues PK-unit didn’t all of a sudden decide to be good, they just played a struggling Preds team. Enjoy the win, but with a few healthy teaspoons of salt.

The defense can be…competent: The defensive core has been the main thing holding the Blues back for the better part of three seasons now, but they’ve been especially bad this year. Not tonight however. The defense played well enough in front of their goaltender Jordan Binnington and were able to limit the amount of chances Nashville got in front of the net. It really shouldn’t be news that the defense put up a halfway decent effort, but that’s the world we live in as Blues fans. If the defense can keep playing like this, maybe the Blues can pick up a few more wins this season and General Manager Doug Armstrong won’t have to blow up the core come July.

The offense needs to stop being nonexistent: Hooray! The defense finally played well and we got solid goaltending too! This is great, except *checks notes* the offense did literally nothing the entire game. God forid the Blues do everything well at once. Don’t let the stats deceive you, this wasn’t a dominant game from Predators goalie Juuse Saros. Saros saved 23/24 Blues shots and helped kill three Blues power-plays, but his workload was pretty light as far as actual scoring chances go. Some of the Blues big guns in Vladimir Tarasenko, Robert Thomas and Ryan O’Reilly were only able to muster one shot, combined. Jordan Kyrou was able to get five shots on net but that was all from the offensive front. The Blues offensive woes should be helped when forward Pavel Buchnevich returns from injury but something else needs to be figured out in the meantime. 

Blues Bits Three-Stars of the Game:

Third Star: Jordan Kyrou

Jordan Kyrou is often heralded as the savior of Blues hockey and games like this are why. No goals, no assists, no big fights, but a very solid effort. A handful of slick passes and some decent shots on goal are all it really takes to stand out in the Blues current offense. Kyrou was able to use his elite speed and his high end skill to lead the Blues offense, unfortunately nothing went in the net for him but he won’t get that unlucky every time. Now everyone else just needs to start playing like Kyrou and the Blues are set. 

Second Star: Torey Krug

Blues media have been using Torey Krug as a scapegoat for months now and it’s not entirely undeserved. The 31-year-old defenseman has been very, very, very not good this season. I guess he had enough of the criticism because this game acted as hopefully the first act of a redemption for Krug. He contributed on offense with three shots and an assist on Brayden Schenn’s game-winning-goal. Krug also didn’t turn the puck over needlessly and he played well in his own end. This type of play is why Armstrong signed Krug to that massive seven-year, $45 million contract back in 2020. Here’s hoping that he can keep this up.

First Star:  Jordan Binnington

Guess who’s back? It’s like he never left. Jordan Binnington, after an abysmal start to the month that saw him benched for backup Thomas Greiss, was finally ready to reclaim his net. The $6 million man was sitting at 99 career wins before the contest, Binnington stopped all 25 shots he faced including a rocket slap shot from Predators defenseman Mattias Ekholm that briefly wounded the Blues netminder. Binningtons first career win on Jan. 7 2019 was a 25-save-shutout and now his 100th career win is a 25-save-shutout. How poetic. Binnington‘s poor play in early December isn’t the only reason that the Blues have struggled, but it certainly helps to have him playing well again.