Minnesota has Faber who had a good playoff showing and has stepped in and continued that in the top 4. It was a risk, but it's not no replacement. It's a highly touted young player the organization had confidence in. They have 2 losses to New Jersey, 1 to LA, 1 to Toronto, and one bad loss to the Flyers.
You said it yourself for Winnipeg, they bolstered their wings to make up for Dubois. It's okay if you don't think it outweighs it, but early returns have been suggest it has with 56% actual goals for and 54% xGF, and solid looking shooting metrics from across the board with nothing particularly unsustainable. They have 4 losses; 2 to Vegas, 1 to LA, and 1 to Calgary which would be their only bad regulation loss.
Nashville had the "advantage" of being a pretty mediocre team to start with, so they had the least work to do to break even. ROR and Nyqvist have fit like a glove with Forsberg and as long as they have Josi and Saros they're hard for us to pass. They have the most pedestrian schedule and losses of the 3 with a 1 to Seattle, 2 to Vancouver, 1 to Tampa, and 1 to Boston.
So of these teams that you called out as struggling, the only one with a comparable schedule to us is Nashville, who are in the top 5 in xGF, top half of the league in actual GF, and are in the middle in terms of shooting stats. I wouldn't count on us being close to them by mid season once schedules even out unless some of these teams start slumping heavily when it comes to the process.
If we're talking about 'quality' losses, our 4 losses stack up right with them. Colorado and Vancouver are both top 6 teams by points percentage and our two 'bad' losses came against teams that on par (or better) with Seattle, Calgary, and Philly.
I also think it is worth looking at games that went to OT. Our lone loser point came against a damn good Dallas team and then we required a shootout to beat a struggling Seattle team.
Minnesota has been past regulation 3 times. They snagged loser points against Washington and Columbus and then beat the Rangers in a shootout.
Winnipeg has been past regulation 3 times. They snagged loser points against Montreal and the Rangers while beating Edmonton in OT.
Nashville makes up for their weaker regulation losses by only going to OT once, where they beat the Leafs.
Again, I feel the need to stress that I'm not rushing to put my money on the Blues to make the playoffs. I'm not trying to argue that this team is the 3rd best team in the division or that the way we play is a desired recipe for success. If I were betting even money, I would absolutely take the Blues to miss the playoffs, but I very much believe that this division sucks, this conference sucks, our goalie tandem can be above-average and because of all that there are tons of opportunities to snag points out of games where the metrics say the other team outplays us 60/40 or 55/45.
I completely agree with you that there is some unwanted regression to the mean coming on the GA vs xGA. However, I firmly believe that Kyrou will get his shooting percentage up from 5% into the double digits and that the PP will get from 3.7% into the double digits. I don't think either of those things requires any change whatsoever to our offensive looks and that gets a non-significant increase to GF. It won't cover all of it if the wheels fall off the goaltending, but if the tandem is average or better all year it probably covers all or damn near all of it.
From pure eye test, I'm seeing significantly fewer back door tap in chances than last year. I'm seeing a backup that
clearly instills more confidence in the team than Greiss did. I'm seeing Kyrou go through one of his twice-a-year "can't buy a goal" spurts, but for the first time in one of those spurts I'm seeing a player who is passable defensively and isn't an active drain on the team when he's not scoring. I'm seeing a PP that is a complete disaster from a personnel and execution standpoint. I'm incredibly frustrated that we still haven't tried the very obvious strategy of "putting your best shooter on the top PP unit" but I (perhaps foolishly) believe that we will give that a shot at some point. And as bad as it has been, I'm confident that it isn't as bad as 3.7% even if we continue to try and fill a bunch of round holes with square pegs. I'd bet a large sum of money that the PP will click at 11% or better over the remaining 72 games. That's triple the goal scoring rate of the current PP and would still be good for 3rd worst ever in the salary cap era.
With all of this said, the rest of this month should end a lot of the questions and give us a pretty clear direction one way or another regardless of what we all think this team
should be. We have 12 games in the final 24 days of November and that schedule includes 2 against Arizona, 1 against Winnipeg, 1 against Nashville, 1 against Minnesota, 1 against Chicago, and 1 against San Jose. Lot's of "4 point" games against the 3rd-8th best teams in the Central that we're directly competing with plus a game against the worst team in hockey. You can dig a big hole or create a nice playoff cushion by winning/losing to the right/wrong teams in the next 24 days.
