Depleted lineup finally catches up to Blues in 6-5 loss to Leafs; errors made by key players

Costly mistakes, particularly on Toronto's late go-ahead goal, proves 

fatal for team that was finding ways to win despite missing several key players

By LOU KORAC
ST. LOUIS -- It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The Blues had been living well for quite some time, riding out games in which they were missing key players in the lineup on a daily basis, it seems.

(St. Louis Blues/Scott Rovak)

Toronto's William Nylander (right) looks to make a play defended by the

Blues' Niko Mikkola (middle) and goalie Jordan Binnington.

Against the high-powered Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday, the Blues were depleted, playing without forwards Vladimir Tarasenko, Brayden Schenn, David Perron and Pavel Buchnevich along with defenseman Colton Parayko, all out due to COVID-19 protocol. Tarasenko, Schenn and Parayko have started skating Saturday but were unavailable to play. Also, Logan Brown missed his second straight game due to a non-COVID related illness.

Meanwhile, the Leafs were getting back Mitch Marner and Pierre Engvall from COVID-19 protocol, and oh, they have Auston Matthews, who has scored in nihe straight road games.
The Blues had to field a lineup with Alexei Toropchenko, Dakota Joshua, Nathan Walker, James Neal and Klim Kostin missing $29.3 million ($30.05 million of you include Brown) in cap space and 122 points. But the Blues haven't used COVID as an excuse. They kept plugging and playing.

And winning.

It bit them Saturday, finally, in a stinging 6-5 loss to the Leafs to end their 13-game home point streak (12-0-1).

And it wasn't those fringe players that made the mistakes that cost the Blues (22-11-5) goals on this night.

It was some of their veteran guys that are in the lineup on a nightly basis.

Case in point, the Leafs' go-ahead goal scored by Ilya Mikheyev, a goal that never should go in in the first place, but the sequence starts with a failed backhand dump-in in the offensive zone by Ivan Barbashev that leads to the Leafs (24-9-3) gaining possession and entering the Blues zone with 4:07 remaining.

From there, it was mistake after mistake and multiple failed executions. 

Walker wasn't able to win a wall battle -- something the Blues had issues with most of the game -- along the right side that enabled the Leafs to keep the puck deep. Tyler Bozak had the first of multiple failed clearing attempts when instead of firing it hard off the boards or whipping it straight out, he softly throws it off the boards and the puck's picked off. Then Justin Faulk had the first of two failed clears, the first when he fanned while trying to slap it around the boards. And then Bozak plays it around the boards but it was kept in at the point. The puck gets thrown back around to the opposite side, Bozak in possession again, flips it off the back boards to Faulk, who instead of slamming it out of the zone, tries to feather one up to the blue line to James Neal, only to get picked off again. The puck was there to be won on the wall again, and Neal's backhand attempt to clear the zone was also unsuccessful. Neal gets to it along the left boards, and throws it off the back boards around to Marco Scandella, who gathers it with acres of empty space to finally get a clear. But for whatever reason, inexplicably, Scandella, instead of moving it safely out of the zone, whether skating it out or just pushing it ahead while the Blues are making a line change, he reverse pivots it while making a change himself at the end of a 1:59 shift back behind the net out of the reach of Faulk. The puck gets picked off by Engvall, who feeds Mikheyev, and if anything didn't go wrong to begin with, he scored in a sharp angle that Jordan Binnington allowed through the wickets, a goal that should never go in. 

"The guy (Mikheyev) just threw it on net and it went in," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "That's how I saw it, but before that, we should have had the puck out twice, and we didn't. Wall play wasn't very good and then we have it again and go behind our net. That puck should be out of the zone."

It capped off a sequence of errors that kept the Blues from at least earning a point in a game in which they came out with a lead, then went flat, came back to regain the lead in the third and lose in the end.

"We just kind of gave up the middle of the ice a little too much," said Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly, who scored twice. "We weren’t our normal heavy-to-play-against and stopping-on-pucks (self) and such. A team like that, they’re so skilled offensively and thrive off that. We just kind of gave them too much early and it starts with myself. I was horrendous defensively tonight and wasn’t hard enough to play against. I think other guys probably feel that way, too. We’re not going to win games when the staple of our game is being good defensively and playing hard to play against, and we’re not going to win a lot of games if we don’t defend well. It’s frustrating, but I think we got what we deserved tonight. We kind of played their game and obviously got beat at it."

But did they?

The Blues, depleted and all, scored five times on Atlantic Division All-Star Jack Campbell, and for how the Blues play, five goals is more times than not more than enough to win. 

But it was one of those mistake-filled, wind-up-in-the-back-of-your-net games that cost them two points.

"We got sloppy with the puck, turned it over, and they obviously had an elite offense and they’re going to capitalize," said Blues forward Brandon Saad, who had a goal and an assist. "So that’s what happened.

"You’re back and forth in the game. And you have an opportunity to finish it off, that’s what you want to do. Unfortunately, we kind of let that one slip away. At the end of the day, it is what it is and we have to move on from it."

After O'Reilly scored a nifty goal to give the Blues a 1-0 lead, the Leafs capitalized on an unusual play when O'Reilly was jumped on a defensive zone draw by Matthews, who instead of trying to win the face-off back, jumped his stick in front of O'Reilly and was able to get a shot off on Binnington, who made the kick save, but Michael Bunting skirted past Barbashev to backhand the rebound home.

"Yeah, it was a great play by him," O'Reilly said of Matthews. "It was really smart. I’ve seen it the odd time before. Yeah, when I’m going hard backhand like that, he made a great play … Especially, too, in the circle, (this) is probably the worst season I could’ve had in the face-off circle. I can’t seem to win anything. It’s frustrating, but yeah, I’ve got to give him credit there, he made a good play and it was a tough one to eat."

OK, move on, it happens. But goals two and three? They came off mistakes.

Mitch Marner made it 2-1 when he stripped Oskar Sundqvist, who was causual with the puck turning and trying to move it out of the d-zone, from behind and skated into the high slot and beat Binnington high glove (this is  theme for the night).

On John Tavares' goal that made it 3-1, three goals that came in a span of 3:44, Jordan Kyrou had a chance to clear the zone but just poked the puck to the wall in the d-zone, Toronto cycled it to the point, where a shot caromed at the skates of Niko Mikkola and Alexander Kerfoot. Kyrou overplayed the puck and Tavares swooped in and and beat Binnington again high glove from the high slot.

Berube called a time out to calm the troops down.

"I was just talking about more or less the same things I've been talking you here, we've got to do things quicker, move the puck quicker and play, skate and attack, get going," Berube said. "We kind of watched a little bit tonight and didn't put the pressure on them enough overall. That's basically what I got out of this tonight. We didn't dictate enough tonight."

After the Blues tied it 3-3 in the second on goals by O'Reilly and Saad, Timothy Liljegren's goal came after the Blues failed to again get a puck in deep from the neutral zone, enabling Toronto to move the ice up quick and gain zone entry. The puck was worked around on the point, down low and around to the high slot for a one-timer from ... the high slot ... high glove. 4-3 game.

"I think most of (the mistakes) were self-inflicted," Berube said. "I mean, we're playing with fire with the penalties a little bit. We only got one power play tonight, but some of them are self-inflicted. They're a good team, they're a good offensive team, they score lots of goals."

"I think a little bit of both. It’s tough," Saad said. "There was a lot of self-infliction with pucks in the middle, a little bit of careless play on our end. Sometimes, when you’re in trouble you’ve just got to go off the boards with it, survive and live another day. But if you’re kind of throwing pucks away, not being hard in the middle of the ice, they’re going to take advantage of it."

But through all that, the Blues tied it before the end of the second on a Robert Thomas goal set up by a highlight reel play by Kyrou, who was a man possessed winning a puck from Liljegren and working a play to Thomas to make it 4-4. And Mikkola scored early in the third to give the Blues a 5-4 lead after they killed off 56 seconds of a Toronto power play to begin the period.

But Toronto came fast and furious. The Leafs at one point had a 10-1 shots advantage in the third and cashed in on their third power play when Matthews one-timed a Marner feed from the left circle to make it 5-5 with 8:36 to play.

It came after a Klim Kostin holding penalty, minutes after Dean Morton missed an obvious trip on Jake Muzzin on Kyrou, literally feet from the official. 

"Can't take a penalty, we took a penalty and they tied it up," Berube said.

It set up for at least a tie, head to overtime with a point in hand and fight for a second.
But the Blues, who were outshot 13-4 in the third, didn't make a hard enough push until they were down and with an extra attacker.

"The third, we just didn't push enough, I didn't think," Berube said. "We had the lead there and we just kind of sat on it a little bit. ... But overall, they battled, our guys. We're pretty depleted tonight. We scored first, a little unfortunate first goal we gave up. In the end, we came back, we were down 3-1, they battled back and we made a game of it, but overall, the puck play wasn't good enough to break pucks out and get the puck up 200 feet getting in the offensive zone more."

Depleted, yes. Excuses no.

"Yeah, personally you hate to think of that," O'Reilly said of the depleted lineup. "But yeah, you look at who we're missing, we're a significantly different team with the guys that aren't here. But still we do have a lot of good players and I think I need to do a much better job of leading the way and sticking to our identity when we don't have those guys and I think throughout the course of the year, we've done a great job at that. When guys go down, guys have been stepping up and doing that. It's just tonight, I think we are all a little disappointed ourselves. We have to play harder and be tougher against."

As for Binnington, Berube wasn't going to make any knee-jerk reactions, but the fact that the Blues' No. 1 netminder allowed three or more goals for the 15th time in 22 starts, and eight times allowing four or more goals in a game, it has to be concerning at this point.

Binnington has a 3.05 goals-against average and .906 save percentage after allowing six goals on 40 shots Saturday.

"A lot of those goals were pretty high end," Berube said. "I've got to go back and look at them. I'm not going to answer that question right now. I've got to look at it on tape and then we'll go from there."

There were still good signs and remnants of the Blues battling even with a depleted lineup, including Scott Perunovich returning from his bout with COVID protocol after missing three games. It just so happens on this night, the mistakes were costly.

(St. Louis Blues/Scott Rovak)

Blues defenseman Justin Faulk (72) fights for a loose puck with Maple Leafs

forward Mitch Marner on Saturday night at Enterprise Center.

"It was not clean enough, our exits and our support," O'Reilly said. 'I kind of touched on this before, just kind of fighting the puck all over the ice. There's times, we're trying to do the right thing and just fighting it and not getting it by guys, not getting it deep and our game, it's got to be a staple of our game and build it from there. When we're not doing it, it's frustrating, we make it hard on ourselves and a team like that, they just they thrive on it. They're run-and-gun, they're very fast and they make plays all over the ice. They're going to try to beat guys all the time. And if you feed it like we did, you end up with six goals against and that's not a winning recipe.

"Offensively, we found a way to get some goals and going to the net. It was something we talked about, that's an area that if we want to score and get bounces you go to the net and it was good. We scored some but again, the most important thing for us is the way we defend and that's what the reset and the focus has got to be on when we go on to another tough game coming up here."

The good news through all this is when the Blues end the homestand against Nashville, they should have some reinforcements return to the lineup.

"For sure, any time you can get some good players back and have a healthy team, that’s always exciting," Saad said. "So I think for us, it’s just one day at a time and take it as it comes."​