GDT: Blues @ Avalanche|Round 1, Game 2| Blues down 1-0|

[The Note]

Everyone gets how bad the NHL is at being a pro sports league, right? And now we're trotting out that there's some secret cabal -headed by the NHL - that is working against the Blues? This is the league that can't get their own playoffs on a schedule that makes any sense. Give me a break.

As an aside I cannot decide which makes me wince more: Refalanche or Covidrado. Both are just...just awful.

 

[Eldon Reid]

I really don’t think CO played good at all tonight. The idiot announcers kept talking about the shots but they clearly have a strategy to throw any puck on net for a whistle. Didn’t get the bounces or the calls tonight. Double deflection goal, Landeskov boarding on ROR goal, and forgot the other

I hate that when they talk about shots. Just lobbing in shots from 50 ft out with no one in front of the net isn't dominating the game. Like the 1st 19-6 on shots. 10 of those 19 shots were from 40ft away or from horrible angles that have a very low likelihood of going in.

I thought Colorado didn't play great at all personally. I thought we were better team for sure.

 

[TheDizee]

I hate that when they talk about shots. Just lobbing in shots from 50 ft out with no one in front of the net isn't dominating the game. Like the 1st 19-6 on shots. 10 of those 19 shots were from 40ft away or from horrible angles that have a very low likelihood of going in.

I thought Colorado didn't play great at all personally. I thought we were better team for sure.

idk i dont think we were the better team but both teams didnt play well. i think once the avs went up 3 they went into prevent defense.

for the blues to beat the avs they need to stop backing in so much and clear the front of the net more. on offense the blues havent really carried the play outside of really the first 10mins or so of game 1 and then the 3rd period of g2 when the avs sat back. people like schwartz and tarasenko gotta step up if they are gonna play on the top lines and PP.

none of it matters though if faulk is done for a while, those minutes cannot be replaced by anyone on the roster since Parayko is not his normal self. We are hurting on D right now. If Krug ever wants to step up this year, now is the time. Hopefully they wont be out long term but I would be shocked if Faulk played again in this series after the way he looked when he was down.

 

[Stealth JD]

Hot take incoming in 3...2...1:

The only players I am certain are worth keeping moving forward are ROR, Perron, Kyrou and Binnington. I am not sure I have much attachment to anyone else. We really do look like a team in decline.

Hotter take: I'd explore the market for ROR while his value is still high.
Blues aren't making the playoffs next year (bookmark this) unless massive changes are made to this roster; and with a flat cap and an expansion draft - good luck with that, Army. ROR has two playoff runs remaining on his contract, and is unlikely to be paid what he's worth. (Conn Smythe/Selke-winning #1C shouldn't have to fall-in-line with Armstrong's absurd payroll expectations) He's already a poor skater, and that isn't going to improve in the coming years.

If this team is going to rebound in the next few years, it has to restock the youth, purge some payroll and get younger and faster. Every one of Faulk, Schenn, Krug, Tarasenko, Scandella should be made available to the Kraken (if they can't be traded separately for value) and guys like Schwartz and Hoffman better show how much they want to be here by taking a team-friendly deal, or they can let some other club deal with those contracts. It's a perfect opportunity to rebuild - blame the pandemic, blame the financial landscape, blame Pietrangelo, blame whoever you want - but for a team that is clearly on the wrong side of contention, there's no need to have a max salary cap. If you're faced with a 6th-8th place next year next year (as I suspect they are) why pay top-dollar for the rights to get punked by the likes of Arizona and Nashville?

The Cup win should buy some goodwill for the club. The pandemic should buy some understanding. What the Blues appear unable to buy with this ensemble of players is a cohesive system capable of challenging for a championship. They've never looked more like a collection of independent contractors than they do now; and they've got little hopes of being anything more than a playoff-bubble team as currently constructed.

So - way to go Doug Armstrong!

 

[Louie the Blue]

Hot take incoming in 3...2...1:

The only players I am certain are worth keeping moving forward are ROR, Perron, Kyrou and Binnington. I am not sure I have much attachment to anyone else. We really do look like a team in decline.

Parayko, Thomas are worth keeping as well in addition to Faulk, who I think will age fine with his contract.

Everyone else I’m indifferent on.

I also think the team on decline comment is overstated. I’m not saying this team wins the Cup if healthy, but it’s hard to evaluate how good this team is/was given the massive number of injuries.

 

[Thallis]

Parayko, Thomas are worth keeping as well in addition to Faulk, who I think will age fine with his contract.

Everyone else I’m indifferent on.

I also think the team on decline comment is overstated. I’m not saying this team wins the Cup if healthy, but it’s hard to evaluate how good this team is/was given the massive number of injuries.

Planning to go into rebuilding seasons with Faulk as your #1 is unfair to him. It'd be Brewer 2.0

 

[Louie the Blue]

Planning to go into rebuilding seasons with Faulk as your #1 is unfair to him. It'd be Brewer 2.0

Not saying that-just that I’m fine with him being on the roster moving forward and don’t have major concerns with him long term as opposed to someone like Schenn or Schwartz. I have concerns with Krug’s contract in about 2 seasons.

I also don’t think Stillman/Armstrong would be able to sell the idea of going into a rebuild 2 seasons after winning the Cup...I think there will be moves made to be younger or retool. I don’t think all of Schwartz, Tarasenko, Schenn will be back next season.

 

[AVictoryDive]

God these takes just make me go into durrr mod. Geez some of you take being a Blues fan to a new level

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Parayko, Thomas are worth keeping as well in addition to Faulk, who I think will age fine with his contract.

Everyone else I’m indifferent on.

I also think the team on decline comment is overstated. I’m not saying this team wins the Cup if healthy, but it’s hard to evaluate how good this team is/was given the massive number of injuries.

Agreed.

Let's just face it, the Avs have built a powerful team this year. I remember years past where they sucked. It's a cycle. The Blues "suffer" from mostly being "just good enough" to make the playoffs. I think they have one of the best records for making the playoffs (recent expansion teams like Vegas excluded). We rarely have complete shitshow years where we burn it all down, get a ton of high draft picks over a series of years, and build a powerhouse. The team always seems to find a way to keep us in the hunt.

 

[Novacain]

God these takes just make me go into durrr mod. Geez some of you take being a Blues fan to a new level

The Blues are an aging team with tons of money locked into non elite players, with very little in the way of high end prospects on the way and no real way to fix the main issues on the team. And we have this season and especially so far this playoff series to see how big of a cap there is between us and the Colorados of the world. If you’d like to layout how this team can be a legit cup contender any time soon, please lay it on us.

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Personally, I'd rather we always stay in the hunt and have a year season like 2018-2019 where it all comes together. To burn it all down in the hope of getting a bunch of top draft picks year after year that pan out in order to win it all at some future date seems less doable to me. I've seen that tried in a number of orgs and it often doesn't work.

 

[AjaxManifesto]

The Blues are an aging team with tons of money locked into non elite players, with very little in the way of high end prospects on the way and no real way to fix the main issues on the team. And we have this season and especially so far this playoff series to see how big of a cap there is between us and the Colorados of the world. If you’d like to layout how this team can be a legit cup contender any time soon, please lay it on us.

It's that strategy choice: "death by a thousand cuts" versus a team with a few superstars surrounded by mediocre players.

DA has picked the first option.

 

[Louie the Blue]

The Blues are an aging team with tons of money locked into non elite players, with very little in the way of high end prospects on the way and no real way to fix the main issues on the team. And we have this season and especially so far this playoff series to see how big of a cap there is between us and the Colorados of the world. If you’d like to layout how this team can be a legit cup contender any time soon, please lay it on us.

Easy. Do the following:

2/3 of Schenn/Tarasenko/Schwartz need to moved. Personally, I’d keep Schwartz over the other 2 because I think his game will age better than Schenn’s and Tarasenko’s.

Re-sign Hoffman.

Upgrade bottom pairing RD.

Let Bozak walk and sign a stop gap to 1 year deal.

Trade 1 of Dunn(would prefer to keep) or Krug.

Honestly, I’d look at bringing Stastny back.

 

[Novacain]

It's that strategy choice: "death by a thousand cuts" versus a team with a few superstars surrounded by mediocre players.

DA has picked the first option.

The only way that strategy works, if it ever does, is if you have a unified team in both style and focus. The Blues are certainly not well focused at this point and I couldn’t tell you what style of team we are. We don’t have the defensemen to be build our roster on being a dominant defensive team, and we aren’t high powered enough up front to hold a candle to the elite teams in hockey that way. Depth only wins if you have means to shutting down elite players (as this series has shown, we do not), and your depth is actually great (and as our season has shown, ours isn’t)

 

[Novacain]

Easy. Do the following:

2/3 of Schenn/Tarasenko/Schwartz need to moved. Personally, I’d keep Schwartz over the other 2 because I think his game will age better than Schenn’s and Tarasenko’s.

Re-sign Hoffman.

Upgrade bottom pairing RD.

Let Bozak walk and sign a stop gap to 1 year deal.

Trade 1 of Dunn(would prefer to keep) or Krug.

Honestly, I’d look at bringing Stastny back.

How in gods name does this scenario make us better then the 16-17 Blues, let alone a cup contender. You are proposing a bunch of subtracting and adding next to nothing to actually fix issues.

 

[Davimir Tarablad]

Teams as fast and as skilled as the avalanche are designed specifically to cause structure to break down and find seams in the ice. We don't typically play 5 tight in the D zone, so passing lanes are going to open. Our players need to have the awareness to recognize the opposition's movements as they happen and the quickness to disrupt the play and take it the other way. We've done it a few times, but the lack of speed absolutely has made it hard for us.

I was talking more towards our structure on breakouts. With Parayko hobbled, Dunn and Walman out, we don't really have any D that can skate the puck out of trouble, so when the breakout doesn't start well, we're pretty much guaranteed to get hemmed into our zone.

 

[Reality Czech]

God these takes just make me go into durrr mod. Geez some of you take being a Blues fan to a new level

It is interesting to see the swings, isn't it? It takes me back to the years when the Blues lost to Chicago and LA when they were at their peak. It can't be our year every year, sometimes there are opposing teams that are just simply better and there isn't much we can do about it. It doesn't always have to be because the coach, GM, or players made some terrible mistakes.

Obviously this year has been a disaster for the Blues. We played for most of the year without our 1D and the guy who would be our #1 winger if completetely healthy, and we lost key players like Bozak, Sundqvist, Dunn, Thomas, Schwartz and Barbashev for periods of time. We went through every guy on our taxi squad just to ice a team some nights, yet they still qualified for the playoffs and actually looked pretty good the past couple of weeks. We would have been heavy underdogs even with Dunn and Perron, but I'm not sure what else people would expect to happen. We found out a couple years ago how everything has to go right for a team to win the Cup, and that certainly hasn't been the case this year.

I don't see a team that needs a rebuild or major retool this offseason, I see a team that needs to get healthy and make a few key additions. Kyrou will continue to develop and I have faith that Thomas will at the very least be a solid NHLer, if not the star we all hoped for. These past few weeks have restored my faith in Binnington. It would suck to lose Dunn, but if that happens maybe we would be more balanced with another defensive-minded d-man. We still have plenty of young guys to push for spots and I don't think Army is ready to cut bait on this core just yet, nor should he be.

That being said, I hope they show some fire in the next few games and make it hard on Colorado to put us away. Some young guys are getting some valuable experience right now, let's see what they are made of. Also, don't make Kostin fly all the way over here just to watch from the press box. Throw the kid in there.

 

[EurlichBachman]

I used to post in other teams subs during playoff series pretty regularly. The main reason I don’t now is generally just lack of free time to post at all.

Also, when you could see this teams descent into mediocrity coming a mile away it’s been hard to be super engaged with the team this year. But that’s a personal thing

I’m glad I’m not the only one that hasn’t been very engaged this year. It just seems like a complete waste of a season given all the nonsense the Blues had to go through. These don’t feel like playoff games at all to me.

And it just sucks, 2 years ago it looked like they had built a team that could compete for a cup for a few years. Finally looked like it was our turn to have a dominant few years.. oh well. Back to mediocrity.

 

[Louie the Blue]

How in gods name does this scenario make us better then the 16-17 Blues, let alone a cup contender. You are proposing a bunch of subtracting and adding next to nothing to actually fix issues.

There’s virtually no way to upgrade the roster as it’s constructed significantly without doing trades and mortgaging future draft picks would lead us to this same position in 2 years.

Getting rid of Schenn would likely lead to some assets in return while freeing up cap while Tarasenko being traded would likely have to be included in a larger trade.

Any trade that involves draft picks is not one the Blues should do due to how barren the prospect pool is at the moment.

Best bet is to hope that Kyrou and Thomas develop while maintaining the valuable players around them and cut the fat to bring in younger players.

 

[AVictoryDive]

The Blues are an aging team with tons of money locked into non elite players, with very little in the way of high end prospects on the way and no real way to fix the main issues on the team. And we have this season and especially so far this playoff series to see how big of a cap there is between us and the Colorados of the world. If you’d like to layout how this team can be a legit cup contender any time soon, please lay it on us.

The amount of injuries this year really threw this team off court and there’s no denying that. This team definitely needs to shore up the D a little but the forward group has some promise still. The aging players argument is a little weak to me. Bozqk is 35 next oldest is Perron at 33 and then the guys you probably consider aging are just entering their 30s or late 20s. Yes the blues cupboard is bare and they need to work on taking some high risk high reward players now in the draft but things aren’t as bleak as they seem. I may not have been a fan when they first joined the league seeing as I wasn’t born until 1986, but I don’t share the pessimism that a lot of you have.

 

[TheDizee]

It is interesting to see the swings, isn't it? It takes me back to the years when the Blues lost to Chicago and LA when they were at their peak. It can't be our year every year, sometimes there are opposing teams that are just simply better and there isn't much we can do about it. It doesn't always have to be because the coach, GM, or players made some terrible mistakes.

Obviously this year has been a disaster for the Blues. We played for most of the year without our 1D and the guy who would be our #1 winger if completetely healthy, and we lost key players like Bozak, Sundqvist, Dunn, Thomas, Schwartz and Barbashev for periods of time. We went through every guy on our taxi squad just to ice a team some nights, yet they still qualified for the playoffs and actually looked pretty good the past couple of weeks. We would have been heavy underdogs even with Dunn and Perron, but I'm not sure what else people would expect to happen. We found out a couple years ago how everything has to go right for a team to win the Cup, and that certainly hasn't been the case this year.

I don't see a team that needs a rebuild or major retool this offseason, I see a team that needs to get healthy and make a few key additions. Kyrou will continue to develop and I have faith that Thomas will at the very least be a solid NHLer, if not the star we all hoped for. These past few weeks have restored my faith in Binnington. It would suck to lose Dunn, but if that happens maybe we would be more balanced with another defensive-minded d-man. We still have plenty of young guys to push for spots and I don't think Army is ready to cut bait on this core just yet, nor should he be.

That being said, I hope they show some fire in the next few games and make it hard on Colorado to put us away. Some young guys are getting some valuable experience right now, let's see what they are made of. Also, don't make Kostin fly all the way over here just to watch from the press box. Throw the kid in there.

i agree, no reason to sit Kostin over people like Clifford right now.

besides health, we also need our top players to play like it consistently. 91 is always hurt, 17 is IMO not a good player anymore or reliable at all. 10 has had a really subpar year. when you count on those 3 guys to produce and they dont, it puts alot more pressure on 90/57 to score. They did a great job but when you lose them like we have with 57 now and the others still are not pulling their weight, makes it even tougher to compete.

I wont even go into the D issues right now. Faulk being done for likely a while is a bigger blow than losing 27 would be to prior year teams because atleast then you had people like Jbo who could eat those minutes up. Parayko cannot do that this year, hes too banged up.

Play the young kids and lets see what they got.

 

[Thallis]

The amount of injuries this year really threw this team off court and there’s no denying that. This team definitely needs to shore up the D a little but the forward group has some promise still. The aging players argument is a little weak to me. Bozqk is 35 next oldest is Perron at 33 and then the guys you probably consider aging are just entering their 30s or late 20s. Yes the blues cupboard is bare and they need to work on taking some high risk high reward players now in the draft but things aren’t as bleak as they seem. I may not have been a fan when they first joined the league seeing as I wasn’t born until 1986, but I don’t share the pessimism that a lot of you have.

Injuries to bottom 6 players don't make a contending team post bottom 10 possession and xG metrics. Schwartz and Parayko are the only top 6/top4 players going into the season that missed significant time. There's no guarantee that Tarasenko becomes the same player he used to be, and the collection of Sundqvist, Bozak, Thomas, Gunnarsson, and Barbashev don't have the NHL impact that you can say really derailed the season. The guys who should be driving the play were healthy the whole year. This is the result.

 

[izzy]

i agree, no reason to sit Kostin over people like Clifford right now.

besides health, we also need our top players to play like it consistently. 91 is always hurt, 17 is IMO not a good player anymore or reliable at all. 10 has had a really subpar year. when you count on those 3 guys to produce and they dont, it puts alot more pressure on 90/57 to score. They did a great job but when you lose them like we have with 57 now and the others still are not pulling their weight, makes it even tougher to compete.

I wont even go into the D issues right now. Faulk being done for likely a while is a bigger blow than losing 27 would be to prior year teams because atleast then you had people like Jbo who could eat those minutes up. Parayko cannot do that this year, hes too banged up.

Play the young kids and lets see what they got.

Clifford has been effective on the 4th line, that line creates opportunity after opportunity, wouldn’t change that at the moment as its the only thing working

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Everyone gets how bad the NHL is at being a pro sports league, right? And now we're trotting out that there's some secret cabal -headed by the NHL - that is working against the Blues? This is the league that can't get their own playoffs on a schedule that makes any sense. Give me a break.

As an aside I cannot decide which makes me wince more: Refalanche or Covidrado. Both are just...just awful.

But you forget the best one of all; Assalanche!

 

[Stlblue50]

I hate that when they talk about shots. Just lobbing in shots from 50 ft out with no one in front of the net isn't dominating the game. Like the 1st 19-6 on shots. 10 of those 19 shots were from 40ft away or from horrible angles that have a very low likelihood of going in.

I thought Colorado didn't play great at all personally. I thought we were better team for sure.

100%! Pierre so damn stupid!! He would not shut up about the shots....oh so many shots. CO is dominating in face offs and had a game plan to lob all pucks on net. They really didn’t play well at all in game 2.

With so many better announcers out there why does NBC trot the dumbest and most annoying little dweeb out there every single night. He likes picking Blues games too because we get him 99% of the games