When the Blues have a bad game, they don’t mess around.
With the stakes high at the start of a stretch with five of six games against Central Division opponents, the Blues got trounced by the Minnesota Wild, one of the teams in their rear-view mirror in the playoff race. The Wild may not be a good road team, but they looked like one Tuesday night at Scottrade Center, taking it to the Blues in a 6-2 rout that’s the latest in a line of bad losses for the team at home.
“Everyone knows it’s not our best game,” said forward Vladimir Tarasenko. “It’s disappointing. Not much we can say, you know?
“I said it before. We can’t play like this at home. It’s on me. On us. On the leaders.”
This one falls on just about everybody, and it fits a discouraging pattern. While the Blues have played better, winning six of their past eight overall, they’re 3-3 in their past six home games, with the losses coming by scores of 7-4, 5-2 and 6-2. The games have all played out pretty much the same way, with the team looking flat and uninspired and unable to stop being flat and uninspired.
For a team in the thick of a playoff race, you would expect urgency to be easy to find. Not so for the Blues. It didn’t look like the Wild wanted it more. It looked like the Wild wanted it a lot more.
“It’s all about urgency,” forward Alexander Steen said. “At this time of the year, urgency and preparation. What you’re going to see now down the stretch, this is where the games start to tighten up, and you’re not going to get anything for free. It’s all about what you earn and tonight they earned more than we did.
“From an urgency standpoint that was not acceptable tonight.”
The team’s play at home is “disturbing,” coach Mike Yeo said. “That’s disappointing that we’re coming out and ... the turnovers that we had in the first period, instead of making it hard on (Minnesota) and making it a really tough night, we didn’t do that. We made it easy and we allowed them to get going. Yeah, that’s something we’ve got to fix obviously.”
The loss will certainly ratchet up the pressure on the Blues for their game Thursday against Colorado, another team trying to come from behind in the Central, and then a road game at division-leading Winnipeg on Friday. Next week, after a game with Pittsburgh on Sunday morning, the Blues have road games at Nashville and Dallas.
“It’s a big week for us divisionally,” Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo said. “We’ve got a lot of games against division opponents, so we have to respond no matter what the next two games. It’s too big of a week for us, too big of points for us not to.
“The goalies stand on their heads for two months and then we do that to them. Just disconnected all over the ice. Mostly the puck movement and support is what it comes down to. Coverage issues. Stuff we can fix, but we need to fix.”
Yeo said Tuesday morning that he was handling his team’s goalie situation on a game-by-game basis, choosing between Carter Hutton and Jake Allen by who gives them the best chance. Coming off a shutout win Saturday against Buffalo, Yeo went with Hutton, but that didn’t work.
Hutton came into the game having given up two goals total in his past four games, but he gave up three in the first period and was pulled in favor of Allen, making just his third appearance in the past nine games, at the start of the second period. It didn’t change anything.
“I just don’t think that we were good enough tonight,” Yeo said. “I don’t think that this loss, in any way, is just on the goalies, but again collectively, as a group, we weren’t good enough.”
Yeo has had to deal with this before, and every time you think a game is so bad it has taught the team a lesson, they face another trip to the principal’s office.
“You’re always concerned,” Yeo said. “I want to make sure that I’m careful (with what I say) because obviously you’re emotional right now after the game. We won five of our last six before this game. But coming into these games, division games, teams that are chasing you, teams that you want to catch, you’ve got to have a mindset that you’ve got to fight for every inch on the ice and I don’t think that we had that tonight.”
Briefly, it looked good for the Blues, when Jaden Schwartz jammed in the rebound of a shot by Colton Parayko 45 seconds into the game to put them up 1-0. The good times lasted 77 seconds.
Minnesota’s Gustav Olofsson hit the post and the puck caromed off the face of Nino Niederreiter and out in front of the goal. Hutton couldn’t find the puck and and Niederreiter was able to get it back, turn and shoot before Hutton could get reset. Minnesota took the lead with 3:07 to go in the period and extended the lead to 3-1 on a power-play goal with 1:53 left in the period, and the Blues could not get out of the downward spiral they were in.
“We’ve got to find a way to get out of it, that’s reality,” Pietrangelo said. “We’ve got to understand when the game is not going the way we want we have to work even harder for each other, create more pressure, and continue to stay on our toes, sometimes you have to work that extra to help each other out.”
Things have to change quickly. With the schedule ahead for the Blues, a string of losses would be costly.
“I expect a big response on Thursday,” Pietrangelo said.
“We’re not going to play like this,” Steen said.