Don't be fooled by the points or the standings, this is a BAD hockey team. They had no business even getting a point out of that but Korpi saved their butts on numerous occasions. Also good Freddy showed up and for some reason he likes to play well against his home town team but we generally don't get that effort every night. St. Louis should probably trade target him.
You can see the offensive creativity on the Merkulov play. Not that he was all that good (he wasn't) but the creativity stands out when it happens, just like it did at times with Poitras, because there's so little of it from the rest of the roster. When it happens it looks great and it can be lethal but this team is sorely, sorely, lacking high end offensive talent. Most of our (few) goals come from point shots and net front play. Now there's nothing wrong with that, it's basic 101 hockey, shoot and tip grab rebounds. But IF that's your only weapon you are very easy to defend, and you can see this team just simply CANNOT SCORE.
Outshot and outplayed by a rubbish Blues team with half their D injured. We all knew Bergeron and Krejci were great players but I think maybe we still haven't realized just how great they were and how irreplaceable they have been. Last year we maybe lucked out a little and we got great goaltending all year and several things went right so we ended up better than we should have and this year several things have gone wrong and a few players are slumping and aging and maybe most of all Swayman has most definitely NOT lived up to his big contract and so we have this muddled uninspired mess that tries to win 2-1 hockey games every night and occasionally falls apart and gets blown out like in Dallas.
This team is going nowhere. We desperately need high skilled offensive talent and for the good of the future (the present is a write off) we should dump the aging vets and play the fast young kids mistakes and all. It won't win now, but it just might help speed up the transition. This year at best, even if Swayman gets good again, we squeak in and get bounced early and then what?
Disappointing.