After getting mugged at three different locations in greater New York during an almost weeklong stay, the Blues came home and found their troubles had nothing to do with geography.
The Blues transitioned from a road-heavy stretch of their schedule to a home-heavy stretch and kicked it off with a 4-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators, losers of five in a row and sitting in 29th in the league in points at the start of the day. The Blues penalty kill gave up two goals and then St. Louisan Brady Tkachuk gave the Senators some breathing room with a goal in the third.
The Blues have lost four in a row, the second time they’ve done that this season, and despite being at pretty much full strength offensively, have hit a scoring slump, with just four goals in their past three games. Nothing is coming easy for this group, as evidenced by Brayden Schenn having three tip-in chances near the goal he couldn’t get to go in or Vladimir Tarasenko’s shot from in front of the net that Ottawa goalie Anton Forsberg somehow stuck out his glove to catch just before it went in the net. The whistle blown, Tarasenko just stood there, staring, in total disbelief.
Just when it looked like the Blues were getting some separation from their struggling compatriots in the Central Division, they are now falling back to the rest of the pack.
Last season at this point, after 56 games, their season would have been over. The Blues are ahead of last season: they finished with 63 points last season with a 27-20-9 record. With Tuesday’s loss, they are at 71 points at 32-17-7 and there is still a lot to play for.
For the eighth game in a row, the Blues alternated goalies, with this one belonging to Jordan Binnington, who was 2-1 with a 1.02 goals-against average in his past three games. Signs have been pointing at a return to form for the Blues’ Stanley Cup winning goalie.
“Just getting your rhythm back, Binnington said, “your feel and your touches and communicating with your teammates and reading plays. It’s always different. I think at the end of the day, when you go through stretches like that, you have to look inward and it’s in you and you know it will come back and just keep working and finding ways to make it happen and that was kind of my mindset and just keeping it simple.”
The fourth line had a new look with the callups of Mackenzie MacEachern and Alexei Toropchenko, who took the spots of Klim Kostin and Dakota Joshua, who were both sent to Springfield on Monday. Toropchenko wasted little time making his mark, laying a hit on Ottawa’s Dylan Gambrell as the Senators brought the puck into the Blues zone. Ottawa’s Parker Kelly took offense and went after Toropchenko, which got Kelly a roughing call and got the Blues a power play.
The Blues didn’t score on that power play, but Ottawa got one on theirs. David Perron made a soft pass in his own zone that ended up going to Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk, and Perron then was called for tripping him. Thirty-eight seconds into the power play, Niko Mikkola couldn’t get his stick on a bouncing puck and a few quick passes later, Tim Stutzle backhanded the puck in.
Perron got the tying goal about four minutes later, but it was Ryan O’Reilly who made it happen. O’Reilly knocked down the puck to keep it in the Senators zone, won a battle along the boards to get the puck back and then passed through a crowd to Perron, who backhanded in his 13th goal of the season. The goal was just the third in the past 19 power plays for the Blues.
Late in the first, Torey Krug couldn’t keep the puck in at the blueline and then was called for hooking Connor Brown as he went past him in pursuit of the puck. Most of the power play came in the second period, and with 19 seconds to go in the man advantage, Josh Norris got a pass on Binnington’s left and fired it in to put Ottawa up 2-1.
That was the prelude to another flat second period for the Blues. After having one shot on goal in the second period against New Jersey, they tripled that number all the way to three on Tuesday and the best chance, from Robert Thomas, late in the period, was off target. There might well have been other scoring chances, but the Blues once again showed a propensity to pass when they should shoot.
Like O’Reilly’s goal, Ottawa’s third carried the imprint of one player, Tkachuk. He broke up an exit attempt by the Blues from their own zone, had the puck flipped back to him by Norris and then Tkachuk, with his dad, longtime Blue Keith, looking on, beat Binnington for his 19th goal of the season.
Ottawa added an empty-net goal with 2:47 to go when Stutzle picked off pass and threw it ahead to Alex Formenton, who easily tapped into the goal to make it 4-1. Shortly before that, Blues forward Pavel Buchnevich took a hit to the head and left for the dressing room.
