It was a red-jersey night, but not a red-letter day for the Blues, who saw their four-game winning streak come to an end in the second game of a two-game series against the Arizona Coyotes, 4-3.
At 7-3-1 the Blues are tied with nemesis Colorado in the West Division, also 7-3-1 for 15 points. Once again, a limited crowd of 1,400 were on hand at Enterprise Center.
The home team wore its “reverse-retro” jerseys — a bright red. It may have looked confusing for a team known as the Blues who faced their typical tough time against Arizona.
This one started an awful lot like Tuesday’s affair, with Arizona dominating.
On Tuesday, the Coyotes outshot the Blues 11-1 over the first half of the first period, taking a 1-0 lead on a Christian Dvorak goal at the 10:15 mark
On Thursday, the Coyotes outshot the Blues 11-2 over the first half of the first period, taking a 1-0 lead on a Tyler Pitlick goal at the 9:32 mark.
Only this time, the Blues didn’t regroup to tie the score and gain momentum by the end of the period. This time, they found themselves down 2-0 and outshot 15-9 after one.
Say what you will about the offensively-limited Coyotes, but they always seem to show up to work against the Blues. And that was the case at the start Thursday. The Blues got outworked, plain and simple. Outworked along the boards, outworked in the neutral zone, outworked on puck battles.
Pitlick got behind Kyle Clifford to score in close against Jordan Binnington for the first goal. On the second goal, Conor Garland sped around Colton Parayko on the outside and the cut sharply to the net. Binnington stopped Garland’s shot from the doorstep, but two Coyotes were there for the rebound.
Nick Schmaltz, the brother of former Blues draft pick Jordan Schmaltz, was one of them. His fifth goal of the season was just a poked-in rebound with 2:12 left in the period. The two-goal deficit was the largest faced by the Blues since they trailed the Los Angeles Kings 5-1 en route to a 6-3 loss Jan. 24.
The Blues came out with more bounce to start the second period, but Garland quickly took any wind out of their sails. After a spectacular stretching save by Binnington on a Jason Demers slap shot, the puck trickled behind the Blues goalie.
Garland came crashing in backdoor behind the Blues defense for an uncontested tap-in and a 3-0 Arizona lead at the 5:18 mark of the second.
If you’re sensing a theme here, it’s this: All were greasy goals, forged with second effort and crashing the net. The Blues defense was basically AWOL on all three plays in terms of 1.) keeping the Coyotes away from the net front, and 2.) putting up much of a defense once the Coyotes got net front.
So it was that kind of night for the Blues, causing many Blues fans on social media to blame the red jerseys. Some suggesting they get burned.
As “logical” as that may sound, it may have taken more than that to stop the Coyotes on this night. For the most part they’ve had their way with the Blues in recent years. They’re now 7-3-1 against St. Louis since the start of the 2017-18 season.
The Blues had a couple of power plays after the Garland goal, and generated some shots and chances on both, but couldn’t solve Antti Raanta, who entered the game with a career goals-against average of 1.85 against the Blues in eight previous starts against them.
Injury problems have limited Raanta in recent seasons. In fact, this was only his second game of the season, with Darcy Kuemper taking over the No. 1 role for the Coyotes. But Raanta was in vintage form Thursday, frustrating the Blues at every turn once they got going.
With Binnington pulled for an extra attacker with four minutes still to play, the Blues finally solved Raanta. Mike Hoffman rifled a high riser from the right point that zipped past Ranta with 3:15 to play. It was Hoffman’s third of the season and second in the series against Arizona.
Dvorak scored an empty-netter, his third goal of the season to make it 4-1, but then O’Reilly and Hoffman scored 45 seconds apart and suddenly it was a 4-3 game with 24.9 seconds to play. And that’s how it ended, with the Blues swirling around the net as the final buzzer sounded.
The Blues were without one of their steadiest defenders in Marco Scandella, who was a late scratch and was replaced by Carl Gunnarsson. Scandella took part in the morning skate and was paired with Niko Mikkola on what was supposed to be the Blues’ third defensive pairing during pregame warmup.
But Scandella never came out for the game; the Blues said he had an upper-body injury. He had missed Game 4 of this season against San Jose (Jan. 20) with an upper-body injury, so perhaps he aggravated the prior injury. In any event, Gunnarssson was back in the lineup after being a healthy scratch the previous three games.
