Is St. Louis’ penalty killing line a victim of puck luck or a chink in the Blues’ armor?
Last Tuesday night’s 5-4 shootout win in Calgary snapped a losing streak for the St. Louis Blues and guaranteed they would salvage at least two points from a dreaded western Canadian road trip.
The game also revealed some vulnerabilities in the team’s penalty killing scheme that the Flames, given the better part of a week to prepare, were able to exploit with regularity.
Calgary scored three power play goals in the game, with Matthew Tkachuk’s first period marker followed in the same frame by Sean Monahan and then in the second by Monahan once more. A review of each of the three goals in question reveals substandard defensive play by Blues forwards which led directly to high danger chances.
Tkachuk’s goal was certainly the most random of the three. His one-time shot from the top of the circle to Jordan Binnington’s left appeared to flutter on its way to the net, perhaps glancing off of Carl Gunnarsson.
Ivan Barbashev, paired up front with Alexander Steen, drifted deep into the slot as the Flames entered the zone. The Blues were never able to set up their system fully on that zone entry, resulting in additional time and space for the shooters around the perimeter of the Calgary power play.
Tkachuk’s fluttering shot may have looked tricky in real time, but it wasn’t the result of a challenge from a defender or any sort of rushed play. Had the pass from Mark Giordano not hit a rough spot in the ice, the play would’ve seamlessly transitioned from novelty to laser beam.
Though Steen wasn’t directly involved in Tkachuk’s goal, he would be part of the play — or, notably, not — for each of Monahan’s. While Barbashev drifted too low to allow the first Flames goal, both of Monahan’s tallies would be the result of forwards being stapled to their positions far too high in the defensive zone.
Monahan’s first goal — Calgary’s second — came immediately after Tyler Bozak lost a faceoff at the start of the Blues’ penalty kill.
Bozak then followed the puck high as it went to the point and the Blues shifted into a diamond-shaped penalty kill formation. This represents roughly a 45 degree rotation from the standard box shape, and it would be Steen’s instincts for the latter which created trouble for the former.
As Calgary passed the puck between points, Steen drifted high to cut down the options for Mark Giordano. Giordano was forced to throw the puck to Johnny Gaudreau on the half wall, but with Steen out of position high, his quick and inaccurate pass to Monahan was able to be gathered in, walked to the middle of the slot, and eventually buried after an inordinate amount of time and space was ceded to Monahan, the goal scorer.
The quick move by Steen to challenge the defenseman can be a good play if he’s certain that either he can make an effective play on the puck or that Bozak, the other forward, will slide back to cover behind him. In this case, neither happened, leaving St. Louis’s two penalty killing forwards practically on top of each other as a Flames player was able to pick a spot against a defenseless goaltender.
Monahan’s second goal — Calgary’s third power play goal — was a hybrid of the mistakes made on the first two.
Yet again a Flames forward (in this case Gaudreau) was free to release a shot from the point following a zone entry. That shot would be blocked by Steen, who was marking Monahan as he drifted down toward the faceoff dot to Binnington’s blocker side. When the puck rebounded off his shin pads, though, Steen was caught in between. He proceeded out to Gaudreau as the puck landed at Monahan’s feet, providing him with another free opportunity from a high danger area.
To some extent, the three Calgary power play goals tell a story about the variability of puck luck and the number of ways a team can score. Taken as a whole, though, they tell the story of a team with flaws in its penalty killing scheme that were revealed and picked apart in that scheme’s most vulnerable spots.
According to the venerable @STLBluesHistory Twitter account, before Tuesday night, the Blues hadn’t allowed three power play goals in a game they won since Nov. 6, 1993. Tuesday night’s comeback was an important hill to climb for a team which could have seen a streak get away from them, but instead found a rallying point around which they can build momentum heading into next week’s homestand.
Maintaining that momentum will require an eye for detail and an examination of the team’s own weaknesses in order to guarantee they can be patched before they’re picked apart.
The penalty kill secret is out now. The video is widely available. It’s an essential problem to solve, and then on to the next.
