NASHVILLE — The Blues dropped their third game in a row on Thursday, falling 6-2 to a well-rested Predators team on a night when the struggling offense was joined by its previously stalwart defense.
Three of the first five goals for Nashville came on rebounds of shots stopped by goalie Thomas Greiss. Another, by ex-Blue Zach Sanford, was on a wraparound at the right post and the fifth was on a shot by Roman Josi that hit the glass behind the Blues net, banked off the back of Greiss and trickled over the goal line. The sixth was an empty-net goal as the Blues tried for a miracle comeback.
It was the goals allowed by the Blues this season, and while their offense increased for the second straight game, it has gone from zero to one to two. And the Blues got a five-on-five goal, something they hadn’t done in the previous three games.
The Blues will take Friday off after playing — and dropping — their first set of back-to-backs this season and face Montreal on Saturday at Enterprise Center.
It was a rough night for pretty much everyone on the Blues. Brayden Schenn scored a power-play goal but was on the ice for three of Nasvhille’s even-strength goals. Robert Thomas had the other goal for the Blues. The Blues also saw their penalty kill streak of 11 in a row snapped by Josi’s goal in the third period.
A lead that doesn’t hold
Brayden Schenn put the Blues ahead on a one-timer on a power play with 13:36 to go in the second, his second goal of the season.
The Blues held the lead into the final five minutes of the period but went into the third period trailing. A failed clearing attempt by Schenn kept the puck in the Blues’ end and a short while later, Greiss stopped a shot by Josi but Michael McCarron, set up in front, got the rebound and backhanded it past Greiss to tie the game with 4:13 to go in the period.
McCarron is the center on the Predators’ fourth line, and it was his first goal of the season. Thirty-seven seconds later, another fourth-liner, former Blue Sanford scored. He had the puck behind the net and tried a wraparound that rolled up Torey Krug’s stick and got knocked into the net by Greiss. It was the first goal of the season for Sanford, whom the Blues traded to Ottawa during training camp in 2021 in a salary cap move that netted the Blues Logan Brown. Sanford played last season in Ottawa and Winnipeg, scoring nine goals in 80 games, and became a free agent, signing with Nashville. This was Sanford’s third game this season out of eight for Nashville.
At last a goal
The Blues hadn’t had a five-on-five goal since the Seattle game on Oct. 19, but they needed just 67 seconds in Nashville to get one. Justin Faulk, the team’s leading goalscorer coming into the evening, took a shot from the blueline that Robert Thomas extended his stick on and tipped past Juuse Saros for his first goal of the season.
Before that, the most recent Blues forward to score a five-on-five goal was Schenn, in the first period of the Seattle game. The goals after that were either on a power play, into an empty net or in overtime.
No pucks
Once the Blues took the lead, they barely saw the puck, and Nashville had long stretches of possession. At one point midway through the first period, the Blues had such trouble clearing the puck that Tyler Pitlick and Noel Acciari were on the ice for over two minutes.
The Blues did a lot of running around in that stretch, and with 5:08 to go in the period, Schenn was called for holding. The Blues killed the penalty to run their season-starting streak to 11 successful kills, and four seconds after the penalty ended, Schenn was in the circle to Greiss’ left for a faceoff. Schenn was kicked out of the circle by the linesman and Kyrou took his place. Kyrou lost the faceoff, Yakov Trenin’s shot was blocked by Greiss, but the rebound came off to Tanner Jeannot who put it in to tie the game.
New faces, new places
Craig Berube liked how his lines looked in the last half of the Edmonton game, but with struggling Brown coming out of the lineup, some rearranging was going to have to be done to have enough centers to go around.
So while the line of Thomas centering Jordan Kyrou and Vladimir Tarasenko remained intact, Ivan Barbashev had to move back to center the third line, with Jake Neighbours moving up to be the right win on Ryan O’Reilly’s line, with Schenn on the left.
Josh Leivo, who took Brown’s spot in the lineup, played with Barbashev and Alexey Toropchenko, who Berube said was coming off his best game of the season against Edmonton. Tyler Pitlick, whose play in his first game rated an “OK” from Berube, took Toropchenko’s spot on the fourth line.
