St. Louis Blues must capitalize on remaining schedule to get title defense on track
The St. Louis Blues picked perhaps the best possible time to embark on one of their least successful road trips of the season.
The games were late enough at night that only diehard fans were watching, and their closest competition in the standings had most of the last week off.
Following a 1-3 trip through western Canada, the Blues return home on Tuesday night for their first game at Enterprise Center in nearly three weeks. Twenty days, the team’s bye week, and the All-Star break separate Tuesday night’s matchup with the Carolina Hurricanes from an overtime loss to Philadelphia on January 15th.
That loss was the only one of a five-game home stand which saw the Blues climb to 20 games above .500. They’ve won just one game in the nearly three weeks since.
This unbalanced portion of the schedule puts the Blues in a difficult position as they seek to get back in the natural rhythm of an NHL season. While the time off certainly did good to aching joints and lingering bruises, there’s something to be said for the familiar comfort of the grind. Playing three games a week may be a difficult endurance test, but it helps to guarantee focus and assure that a team is able to benefit from that grind as much as it may be hampered.
The Colorado Avalanche still trail the Blues by eight points in the Central Division, as their bye week ended with a thudding 6-3 loss to the Flyers on Saturday night. Colorado, with three games in hand, still trails the Blues in points percentage, but by a miniscule amount; the Blues are at .594 compared to .590 for the Avalanche.
A rough trip through the Canadian hinterlands has left the Blues trailing the Boston Bruins, Washington Capitals, and surging Tampa Bay Lightning in the overall NHL standings. While they maintain their status as the best team in the Western Conference, the last week has perhaps allowed the President’s Trophy, awarded to the team with the best regular season record, to slip quietly away.
Fewer than 30 regular season games remain in the Blues’ first ever Stanley Cup defense, and their remaining road trips are no more arduous than a week-long dash to New York and a tour through the mid-Atlantic. The return of the team plane from Winnipeg in the wee hours of Sunday morning marked the second to last time the team will travel significantly west this season; a quick jaunt to Anaheim and Las Vegas later this month is all that remains.
They’ll also be aided by a relatively soft schedule.
Only 11 of the Blues’ last 29 games are against teams currently holding a playoff spot. In a league where more than half the teams advance to the postseason, it’s notable that those teams make up only about a third of the remaining schedule.
There’s also not much diversity in those opponents; three of the 11 games against playoff teams are against Dallas. Two feature Tuesday’s opponent, Carolina.
The Hurricanes are far from pushovers, but they also don’t represent the upper echelon of NHL talent. The path is laid out for the Blues to seize an opportunity to cement the place at the top of the standings which was earned through their superlative play in the season’s first half. A dreary stretch through arguably the league’s dreariest travel isn’t yet reason for panic, but does require a quick course correction.
The Blues now have one less regulation win than Colorado and the same number as Edmonton as they continue to disprove the theorem that an NHL team needs more than two quality players to be successful. The dreamlike dance through the season’s first 50 games has given way to a tougher reality, and these battle-tested Blues will have to draw on reserves which may, ever so slightly, begin to dwindle.
The defense of a Stanley Cup championship is difficult in part because of the sheer number of games played. It took 108 games in the 2018-19 season for the Blues to be able to raise a banner; to dive right in to another full year is something to which none of the organization’s players are accustomed. The result, inevitably, is stretches like the last week in which it seems as though nothing is truly clicking and the team is stuck in neutral.
A return to regular scheduling is bound to help. So too is a return to home ice. Enterprise Center has transformed into one of the most formidable home environments in the league, and a fan base which is now daring to dream of a repeat seems likely to dial up its investment and involvement.
There have been excuses to be awarded and mulligans to be handed out. For the Blues, that time has to end. For the Blues, this is the season’s stretch run, and their solid foundation is unlikely to be squandered.
The work starts again Tuesday. People will be able to stay up and watch this time.
