Blues could lose Thomas for a while after injury in 3-1 loss to Coyotes

Center scored early before falling on left wrist in first; Blues once 

again "fighting it, weren't clean" with their game in losing second straight

By LOU KORAC
ST. LOUIS -- It was the kind of game the Blues were looking for from Robert Thomas, one in which he can make an impact in and do the things that have been missing from his game from a complete outlook standpoint.

(St. Louis Blues/Scott Rovak)

Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly (right) looks to make a play as Arizona

defenseman Jordan Oesterle defends the play Saturday afternoon.

Blues coach Craig Berube was wanting Thomas to get around the net more, shoot more pucks and be assertive with the puck, making good decisions with it.

Things were going well, Thomas scored his first goal of the season early in the first period on his third try around Arizona goalie Darcy Kuemper, nearly matching his season output of four shots on goal in 11 games before an abrupt ending in a 3-1 loss to the Coyotes.

Thomas was tripped in the offensive zone by Arizona's Nick Schmaltz and landed on his surgically-repaired left wrist and left the game without returning.

And by the sounds of Blues coach Craig Berube, who would normally give some glimmer of hope for a player returning in a short amount of time, if at all missing any time.
But Berube didn't sound as optimistic about this one.

Thomas played just 3:01 and finished with three shots on four attempts.

"Yeah, he had a great shift there with Barbashev and Sundqvist, and yeah, it's unfortunate," Berube said. "I feel bad for Robert, really bad. He's had a tough start. I was convinced he was going to work his way out of it and now it's an injury ... it's unfortunate."

An injury.

Simple words with big meaning. Perhaps the Blues wake up Sunday and it's not as bad as perhaps feared, but just when you thought there was some hope for Thomas to jumpstart his season, this could derail it for some time.

"It’s unfortunate," Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly said. "I think it’s just kind of a bad bounce. That happens but it’s important to know, you’re going into a chance to get into a rhythm and shorten up your shifts and that’s sometimes a good way to build something and build some o-zone time. Just wasn’t ready for it right away and me personally, always got to be able to bear down and work through it and create something but, that’s just an unfortunate thing."

The Blues lineup Saturday was a mixed bag anyway, and it got worse, but it still doesn't absolve them from the performance they put forth.

Not only was there too much discombobulation, but once again, a disconnect on the ice, and for a better term, lack of confidence throughout the lineup which was missing Zach Sanford because of the flu, Marco Scandella still day-to-day with an upper-body injury, and Tyler Bozak going on injured reserve with his upper-body injury to call up Mackenzie MacEachern and Jake Walman from the taxi squad to free up a roster spot in case Sammy Blais, who also didn't practice on Friday, couldn't play.

But the Blues just looked too broken up, from the defensive end, through the neutral zone, and when they would enter the offensive zone, passes weren't crisp, pucks weren't retrieved with authority and the forecheck was lacking any bite.

It's led to the first losing streak, albeit two games, of the season.

"The biggest thing, we were fighting it," O'Reilly admitted. "You can tell we weren’t clean, especially off the start, starting with myself a bit, little plays didn’t connect on, I think it got in our heads a bit, you can just tell we had the right intention, but it just wasn’t strong. I think we were kind of thinking a bit a little too much and not trusting ourselves. It wasn’t clean, it wasn’t really trusting the plays and such and it killed us. Not what we wanted."

This is a team that shouldn't be fighting anything, let alone lack confidence. They've done too many things, been too many places for that to happen, but here we are after two pretty paltry games against the feisty Coyotes, who took advantage of every Blues blunder, every mistake, even though they could only manage 19 shots on Ville Husso, who started on his 26th birthday.

"I just think we're tight," Berube said. "It looks like we're going out and playing tight. It looks like we're just not playing with much confidence right now. And when you play like that, you don't feel good and it's hard to get going. It just looked like we lacked a little bit of energy and emotion in the game, and that can make the difference."

You bet it did.

And even when teams normally make a third-period push, like the Blues did Thursday despite it being late with the goalie pulled, there was really no push on Saturday in a one-goal game.
Arizona (5-5-1) locked it in on everything the Blues tried, or attempted, to do and made it look relatively easy in doing so.

"Yeah, there were some good looks. But again, maybe you wait a little bit too long to shoot, or again a little bit of squeezing the stick," Berube said. "We've just got to relax and play. We're a good team. We've got good players and I think we've just got to all take a deep breath and relax. You've got to work and we've got to compete hard. We've been scoring lots of goals. Tonight we didn't find the back of the net enough, I understand that, and the power play has got to contribute. Again, they're getting looks too, but it's a hair off here and there and that makes the difference."

On the flip side, Arizona was making its forecheck effective and the Blues had few answers for it. They allowed a close, tight goal to defenseman Jakob Chychrun 2:50 into the game, hometown's own Clayton Keller turned the jets on and raced past Oskar Sundqvist before beating Husso on a break-in from the left in the second and an empty-net power-play goal by Chychrun with 25.5 seconds remaining in the game on what was just a horrendous interference call by Jean Hebert, who drew the ire of multiple players throughout the game on what Berube termed "ticky-tack calls," on Jaden Schwartz with 1:56 to play. 

"They have a good team over there and they play their system well," Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said. "They come hard, they're a hard-working team and we've got to make sure we match that and obviously for us, we've got to make sure that we're coming out of the pucks supporting each other and making sure that we make it easy with the guy with the puck to make a play too. It's on the guy without the puck to make sure he's open and making sure he's talking and communicating a little bit more and make it easy on the guy with the puck to make a play and just supporting each other more."

(St. Louis Blues/Scott Rovak)

Blues defenseman Colton Parayko (55) moves the puck against the

Arizona Coyotes on Saturday at Enterprise Center.

The Blues (7-4-1) will get one more crack at Arizona here on Monday to try and salvage a four-game split, and anything else would be a failure, especially on home ice.

"Overall I didn’t think we generated enough, but we did have a bit of traffic at times, who knows, maybe get a bounce but again, back to that, we were kind of playing when you’re thinking too much, you don’t get the bounces," O'Reilly said. "When you trust your hunger and do the right thing and compete, that’s when you start to get the bounces and we just didn’t do it tonight. We have a few times here and there but not consistently enough and whether it’s traffic or winning the battle on attacking, it’s got to be there to put the puck in the net."