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2019-2020 St. Louis Blues - Defending the Cup - Part 3: The Prelude to Playoff Positioning

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Ranksu said:
@Brian39 to me its more like same players hesitate too much and dont shoot when they have chance. When they wiffle and regroup för another shot which might be even bad selection vs 1St chance irritates me. It happends at powerplay most of time, but last night vs Vancouver. Pietro had great shooting lane, but he hesitate give pass and eventually Faulk shoot in much worse spot and it turns out become 2on1 and Canucks score.
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Again, I don't think the stats back this up.

4th in the percentage of all unblocked shots that score (7.92% of our unblocked shot attempts go in).

5th in the percentage of all shot attempts that score (6.07% of our shot attempts go in).

10th in the percentage of shots on goal that score (10.47% of our shots on goal go in).

I don't see how we could be among the best in the league at the rate our attempts go in the net if we are consistently hesitating and turning good shot selections into bad shot selections. As Blueston eluded to, I think the criticism comes down to confirmation bias that blinds people into how common it is for every NHL player to misread a play and miss out on a scoring chance.
 
Brian39 said:
Again, I don't think the stats back this up.

4th in the percentage of all unblocked shots that score (7.92% of our unblocked shot attempts go in).

5th in the percentage of all shot attempts that score (6.07% of our shot attempts go in).

10th in the percentage of shots on goal that score (10.47% of our shots on goal go in).

I don't see how we could be among the best in the league at the rate our attempts go in the net if we are consistently hesitating and turning good shot selections into bad shot selections. As Blueston eluded to, I think the criticism comes down to confirmation bias that blinds people into how common it is for every NHL player to misread a play and miss out on a scoring chance.
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JR had great article about how Blues 5on3 powerplay sucked.
 
Ranksu said:
JR had great article about how Blues 5on3 powerplay sucked.
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5on3 has absolutely sucked, and part of it is due to missing shots, but the team as a whole outside of that specific situation has been great at getting shots on and in the net.
 
Wondering if Kostin, Brouwer, Walker, or someone else will get recalled with Sundqvist being placed on IR.

If Steen and MacEachern aren't 100%, I would recall someone. I'd personally like to see Kostin get another shot.
 
WeWentBlues said:
Wondering if Kostin, Brouwer, Walker, or someone else will get recalled with Sundqvist being placed on IR.

If Steen and MacEachern aren't 100%, I would recall someone. I'd personally like to see Kostin get another shot.
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If they’re not planning on playing the call up at all I would imagine it Brouwer. If they want to play the call up I hope it’s Kostin.
 
WeWentBlues said:
Wondering if Kostin, Brouwer, Walker, or someone else will get recalled with Sundqvist being placed on IR.

If Steen and MacEachern aren't 100%, I would recall someone. I'd personally like to see Kostin get another shot.
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If Steen or Mac can’t go, don’t we HAVE to call someone up? By my count we’re only at 11 healthy forwards.
 
CaliforniaBlues310 said:
If Steen or Mac can’t go, don’t we HAVE to call someone up? By my count we’re only at 11 healthy forwards.
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That is a no-brainer.

Since Sunny was the only one placed on IR, it could be reasoned that Steen and MacEachern are day-to-day. I was more curious about either Steen or Mac being available to play but not exactly 100% (a misnomer for an NHL player). The back-to-back on Friday/Saturday doesn't help.
 
Poganski looked good when he played 1 game up this season. So I guess he should get call-up.
 
Stupendous Yappi said:
You have been so vocally critical of JR. Its amusing to see you praise something he did, when you previously said you wouldn’t read his work. Be careful, there are posters here that complain if you promote stuff from The Athletic.
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Well IF I read good article I'll give credit.
 
Interesting from EF's 31 Thoughts column:
The Blues ended a three-game losing streak with Tuesday’s 5-4 shootout win in Calgary. They are really good, and it wouldn’t be a stunner if they repeated. What was interesting is that their players and coach Craig Berube said they never talk about it.
“When we were in last place last season, we realized that you have to focus on what you are doing in the moment,” captain Alex Pietrangelo said. “You can’t look ahead. That’s what worked for us.”
“Probably about two or three weeks after we won, we got an email from the coaching staff saying, ‘It’s time to start preparing for next year and this is what we expect,’” laughed David Perron. “At the time, I was thinking, ‘Come on, we just won.’ But, looking back, I thought that was excellent for getting us in the right place mentally.”​
 
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9 GA in the last two games is unacceptable. Some may find this close to blasphemy, but I really don't care if they win the next game, as long as the score is 1-0 or 2-1. Just get those GAs down! We need to focus on team defense. Make it so, Chief! :)
 
I think we can dismiss the notion that nobody in the West can beat us in the Playoffs. At our best, we are clearly top team in conference. But it's a long season and a short series and anything can happen. And if we play like we have for last several weeks, we aren't very good.
 
Thomas and Kyrou have swapped spots. Like having Thomas on the top line with Schwartz and Schenn, and Kyrou can learn with Bozak and Steen.
 
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14 more games this month...FIVE combined with Nashville and Dallas. Boys better get their game in order, otherwise they could face either of those clubs in the playoffs after having given their opponent plenty of reason to think they can take out the champs. Not many easy games on the schedule coming up. Chicago, Minnesota and Winnipeg are still hopeful of salvaging their seasons. Carolina, NYI & Vegas all want to tighten their grips on their playoff positioning. Arizona just got Kuemper back. Basically the club has the Devils and Ducks to look forward to, and a bunch of good or desperate teams with their eyes on the post-season.
 
I'm not nearly as concerned about the last few weeks as a lot of people seem to be. Losing streaks are frustrating, but I felt that we lost despite being the better team twice in the last 4 games. We outshot Vancouver and Winnipeg a combined 77-59. That number becomes 77-56 if you remove empty net shots and we weren't settling for low calorie shots in either game. We ran into hot goalies, which happens. It's frustrating when it happens twice in a week and is even more frustrating when that week also has a poor showing vs Edmonton. But at the end of the day, I feel very confident that we win a best of 7 series against Vancouver or Winnipeg if we put 7 of those efforts in.

We have allowed 9 goals in the last 2 games, but 3 of those came against an empty net. Edmonton also scored an empty netter against us. So did Colorado. For as frustrating as this stretch has been, our last 5 losses have been 1 goal games if you exclude empty netters. Almost every team has a couple stretches like this. Neither of our goalies has brought his full A game over the last couple weeks, a couple bounces haven't gone our way and that has translated to a 1-4-1 stretch despite every game being close.

There is stuff to clean up, but nothing that is any worse than pretty much every team goes through at some point.
 
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simon IC said:
9 GA in the last two games is unacceptable. Some may find this close to blasphemy, but I really don't care if they win the next game, as long as the score is 1-0 or 2-1. Just get those GAs down! We need to focus on team defense. Make it so, Chief! :)
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It is absolutely important to note that 3 of those 9 goals were empty netters. Suddenly that stat isn't too troubling.
 
non-advanced analytics since the all star break.
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