How good do we think we are?

[Stupendous Yappi]

The compressed season really alters things. Normally I'd wait until about 30 games to start forming up thoughts about the team, and then I'd re-evaluate in the 50-60 game range when it's time to start thinking about the trade deadline and whatnot. It's just hard to take 12 games as a meaningful indicator of much of anything, even thought it's a fifth of this season.

With those caveats firmly in place, I will say that a fringe top 10 offense, a fringe top 10 defense, and two bottom 5 special teams units do not a contender make.

I’m pretty sympathetic to this point of view, except that when I look around the division I’m not terribly impressed that any other team is significantly better.

The Blues are not hard to play against right now, at least by the standard of the last couple years. But they score and the goaltending from Binnington is good enough to win with, even steal games at times. I like him for the post-season.

I believe they can become harder to play against, and expect Berube to get them there. If that’s what happens by season’s end, I’d say they are a contender just as much as any team from the West.

 

[Robb_K]

It seems that, currently, The Blues are just not skating hard or well enough to keep up with the speedy Coyotes. They also can't seem to move the puck up ice into the O-Zone consistently, which compounds the problems of making themselves more tired, by having to defend a lot more than The Coyotes. And that also leads to additional penalties, which further tires them out and gets them further behind in the scoring, which leads to them having to take more chances to try to create more offence. I don't know if the problem is lack of energy due to fighting off illness, lack of coordination in their game from integrating the new players and players returning from illness or injury, combined with lack of motivation from a few forwards to get back and help out with defence.

Then, of course, there is their inability to score on the power play. They are shooting too much from way out by The Blue Line, with no movement by teammates down deep, near the crease, and no formation of screens. They need both their shooters and non-shooters to penetrate deeper before letting the shot go, and have teammates in place to jump on rebounds, and set screens. They have thrown away the fundamentals. The puck movement is mostly just back towards The Blue Line, where they end up taking a worthless, no-chance, sure loss of possession shot.

These problems should improve naturally by the new players and coaches integrating in with the team and putting the illness behind (IF that can be done), and by developing strategies for alleviating their current problems. The Blues have a solid roster, and an excellent head coach. They figure to be a contender in The West, which has no dominant teams.

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Updated my vote based on games played to date.

I don't think we are a contender. At the start of the season I thought we would be. However, now I think we will make the playoffs and then just fade away.

I sense that we are back to the Blues mentality we saw in '17-'18 (or early in '18-'19). So unless this team gains a huge amount of buy-in to playing tough physical hockey and gains confidence in playing consistently, I don't see us going very far.

Note that we are back to talking about "passengers" again. We stopped talking about that during the Cup run and the shortened season after that ('19-'20 where the Blues were in first place and then COVID hit). The bubble restart in late '20 was a crash and burn moment for this team and I think they lost the ethos that made them champs. We came in unprepared, assumed that being previous champs would get us through the first few rounds, and we were destroyed by lesser teams who understood the situation. The bubble humbled this team in many ways.

Like I said, the start of this season really reminds me of past seasons where we either started games unprepared to do the work or failed to finish strong. Now we are losing games that we should have won, and it all adds up to having to work even harder as we get to the end of the 56 game regular season.

The Blues are built on the premise that it takes a lot of good players ALL working hard together to be successful (DA has confirmed this and has also called it death by a thousand cuts). We don't have a few superstars that can carry the team like the Avs and Vegas, so when a handful of guys are not mentally prepared or unwilling to put it all out there, we are just a slight above 0.500 team.

Hopefully, the team starts to figure out what needs to be done. We have a deep pool a very good players, they just need to put it all together.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Updated my vote based on games played to date.

I don't think we are a contender. At the start of the season I thought we would be. However, now I think we will make the playoffs and then just fade away.

I sense that we are back to the Blues mentality we saw in '17-'18 (or early in '18-'19). So unless this team gains a huge amount of buy-in to playing tough physical hockey and gains confidence in playing consistently, I don't see us going very far.

Note that we are back to talking about "passengers" again. We stopped talking about that during the Cup run and the shortened season after that ('19-'20 where the Blues were in first place and then COVID hit). The bubble restart in late '20 was a crash and burn moment for this team and I think they lost the ethos that made them champs. We came in unprepared, assumed that being previous champs would get us through the first few rounds, and we were destroyed by lesser teams who understood the situation. The bubble humbled this team in many ways.

Like I said, the start of this season really reminds me of past seasons where we either started games unprepared to do the work or failed to finish strong. Now we are losing games that we should have won, and it all adds up to having to work even harder as we get to the end of the 56 game regular season.

The Blues are built on the premise that it takes a lot of good players ALL working hard together to be successful (DA has confirmed this and has also called it death by a thousand cuts). We don't have a few superstars that can carry the team like the Avs and Vegas, so when a handful of guys are not mentally prepared or unwilling to put it all out there, we are just a slight above 0.500 team.

Hopefully, the team starts to figure out what needs to be done. We have a deep pool a very good players, they just need to put it all together.

Look around the league and scores are up. Like every season, teams that play a tight checking style aren’t usually in gear early. I can’t point to a single team that plays a game similar to the Blues who is performing at a high level right now. It all comes down to whether the Blues progress and improve over the remainder of the season. I think we’d all agree that if they look like this the week prior to the playoffs, expectations should be tempered.

 

[ORRMAN]

Bruins fan coming in peace. Curious to get your feedback on Krug. Admittedly, I was not a fan - great on the PP (although his slap shot was overrated), but I found him weak defensively with painfully slow straight-ahead speed - pretty quick side-to-side.

Are you happy with the signing?

 

[GoldenSeal]

I feel the problem is simply that the team chemistry has been seriously altered with all the new players and the loss of Pie, Jay and Steen.... maybe one or two players need to be moved to make the chemistry we have now click. Just a thought.

 

[GoldenSeal]

Bruins fan coming in peace. Curious to get your feedback on Krug. Admittedly, I was not a fan - great on the PP (although his slap shot was overrated), but I found him weak defensively with painfully slow straight-ahead speed - pretty quick side-to-side.

Are you happy with the signing?

Beyond a few very minor things, I like having Krug.

 

[simon IC]

Bruins fan coming in peace. Curious to get your feedback on Krug. Admittedly, I was not a fan - great on the PP (although his slap shot was overrated), but I found him weak defensively with painfully slow straight-ahead speed - pretty quick side-to-side.

Are you happy with the signing?

Completely agreed on all points, but I was not a fan of the signing right from the start. I am guessing many, if not most, of my fellow Blues fans would disagree with me.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

The compressed season really alters things. Normally I'd wait until about 30 games to start forming up thoughts about the team, and then I'd re-evaluate in the 50-60 game range when it's time to start thinking about the trade deadline and whatnot. It's just hard to take 12 games as a meaningful indicator of much of anything, even thought it's a fifth of this season.

With those caveats firmly in place, I will say that a fringe top 10 offense, a fringe top 10 defense, and two bottom 5 special teams units do not a contender make.

Like I said elsewhere, this team has the pieces to make it click but IMO there's a really small margin for error. I think we're seeing that right now. When the entire team doesn't bring it, we look pretty mediocre. When the entire teams brings it, we can look elite. Can this team get into high gear and stay there for a while? TBD, but I don't get the sense that this is a team that can just "flip the switch" to elite when it wants.

It seems that, currently, The Blues are just not skating hard or well enough to keep up with the speedy Coyotes.

Not just the Coyotes, we have a problem with teams who have speed and use it. It's especially pronounced when we give the opposition room to cruise through the neutral zone; we struggle to handle it and guys get beaten and then it's on the goalie to bail everyone out. If we're not in good position, someone with speed can make us pay. You know, like Kyrou does for us on offense. This team not being particularly fast only compounds the problem.

 

[HighNote]

Parayko not playing like Parayko and our special teams being doo-doo have been killing us. Compound that with stick-work apparently being illegal now, it's going to be difficult for a team that's normally excellent 5 on 5 to get any sort of momentum going in a game because a third of the game isn't 5 on 5. If our special teams were just a little stinky as opposed to vomit-inducing, we'd probably have won an extra game or two.

But I still believe that this team can play with the best of them. There's too much talent and we're too deep for this to continue, especially our special teams numbers.

 

[Thallis]

We're about right where I expected with this roster: pretty distant 3rd best in the division. Special teams have been worse than expected, D a bit better, offense a bit worse. We've been saved by Kyrou so far this season, so I'm a bit worried what might happen when teams start to form plans around slowing him down, but thankfully our division is awful so that should open up room for the top line to contribute more.

 

[Brian39]

Updated my vote based on games played to date.

I don't think we are a contender. At the start of the season I thought we would be. However, now I think we will make the playoffs and then just fade away.

I sense that we are back to the Blues mentality we saw in '17-'18 (or early in '18-'19). So unless this team gains a huge amount of buy-in to playing tough physical hockey and gains confidence in playing consistently, I don't see us going very far.

Note that we are back to talking about "passengers" again. We stopped talking about that during the Cup run and the shortened season after that ('19-'20 where the Blues were in first place and then COVID hit). The bubble restart in late '20 was a crash and burn moment for this team and I think they lost the ethos that made them champs. We came in unprepared, assumed that being previous champs would get us through the first few rounds, and we were destroyed by lesser teams who understood the situation. The bubble humbled this team in many ways.

Like I said, the start of this season really reminds me of past seasons where we either started games unprepared to do the work or failed to finish strong. Now we are losing games that we should have won, and it all adds up to having to work even harder as we get to the end of the 56 game regular season.

The Blues are built on the premise that it takes a lot of good players ALL working hard together to be successful (DA has confirmed this and has also called it death by a thousand cuts). We don't have a few superstars that can carry the team like the Avs and Vegas, so when a handful of guys are not mentally prepared or unwilling to put it all out there, we are just a slight above 0.500 team.

Hopefully, the team starts to figure out what needs to be done. We have a deep pool a very good players, they just need to put it all together.

We started last season 6-3-3, which gave us the exact same point total through 12 games this year. We saw the exact same inconsistency and "effort" issues last season, but most people chalked it up to either a Cup hangover or intentionally conserving energy. I think the only difference in effort/passion that I'm seeing so far this year is in fans' perception and reaction to games. I don't think the bubble showing changed the mentality of the team nearly as much as it changed the mentality of fans. Berube's favorite talking point last year was passengers, so t certainly isn't something that was missing since winning the Cup.

We lose games that we should have won every year. That's hockey. In the first 12 games last season we lost 2 regulation games to a bad Montreal game where we allowed 11 total goals. Those losses bookended a 4 game losing streak where we also lost to the Isles and Canucks. That Canucks loss was a game where we put about 25 pucks into Demko's chest, blew a 3-2 lead and then lost in a shootout where we failed to score on 6 attempts. We went 1-1-1 vs Arizona last season. We went 0-2 vs Montreal. 1-1 vs Buffalo. 1-1 vs New Jersey. In our only game vs an historically bad Wings team we blew a 3-1 3rd period lead, tied it 4-4 late and then won in OT. There were plenty of bad nights last year.

I agree with you that we're probably not contenders, but that was my stance before the season started. I don't think it is an ethos, effort, culture, etc issue. I don't think we are as good of a team as we were when we won the Cup. The blueline is significantly different, I think it is noticeably worse and Allen to Husso is a substantial downgrade. I don't expect the special teams to remain this poor, but we had top 10 PPs in each of the last 2 seasons so I'm not sure there is reason to think we can drastically improve from there. From a pure roster construction standpoint, I don't think it is surprising that we would see the team take some type of step back.

 

[cardinalnation]

Defense needs to be more physical. We are having an issue with them backing in too far again IMO. Second thing is that dreadful power play. No way they can compete if that continues. We need a couple of bounces in a bad way. It can become contagious, guys grabbing their sticks too tight. Zona definitely gets under their skin and disrupts their cycles. Look for something different on the PP. RELAX. Jake Virtanen now on the Block. Better watch your 6 Zach Sanford. That is all!

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Average

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I would feel better about this team's chances in the postseason if we were "cruising" to victories. Not dominating for all 60 minutes nightly, but having a really strong 20-25 minutes during the game where we put the foot on the throat of the other team and scored goals, then played controlled hockey the rest of the time that's still slightly better than the opposition and keeps them at bay. You know, something better than being decidedly mediocre. Instead, we're back in that style of hockey we saw for years where we had better talent and we spent way too much time looking like we were trying to scratch out some 3-2 OT/SO win with the least amount of effort necessary.

 

[Note fan in Big D]

Anyone else think Binner is too aggressive? I get skating-out a bit to cut-off angles, but think he would surrender less goals if he hugged the pipes.

 

[Brian39]

Anyone else think Binner is too aggressive? I get skating-out a bit to cut-off angles, but think he would surrender less goals if he hugged the pipes.

Absolutely not. He has below average NHL reflexes and he is not big by NHL standards. He doesn't have the hands of a Luongo or Lundqvist to effectively play deep in the crease like they did. Part of the reason he carries his glove so high in his stance is because his hands aren't good enough to catch up to high shots if he starts it in a more traditional position. Every aspect of his stance and style is about making himself big to a shooter and then relying on his very good edgework to cover passes. His edgework and butterfly slide is top 10 in the league and largely allows him to cover for his aggression.

I think Binner would be a disaster if he played deeper. He was too deep in the Vancouver series and repeatedly got beaten on straight away shots. He isn't like the over-aggressive version of Allen where he is sliding all over the place and routinely out of position. His top-level edgework allows him to keep his angles well and recover well.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

He isn't like the over-aggressive version of Allen where he is sliding all over the place and routinely out of position. His top-level edgework allows him to keep his angles well and recover well.

This is a good point, and reminds me of what I thought about Allen's game. His best play was when he kept things simple: sound positioning, not overthinking things, letting the play come to him. When he decided to think about it, decided to get a little adventurous, decided to try and rely on his reflexes to bail him out and cut corners, that's where he routinely got burned. Ultimately, Allen's problem was that he knew he had talent and tried to get by on that too often, and he wouldn't play smart as a result and he'd give up a (really) bad goal and suck the energy out of the team.

Binnington? As you note, he's not as talented. He has to overcome that by playing smart. That's what he did in 2019. He kept things simple, didn't make bad plays, and it earned the trust of the guys in front of him because they no longer needed to worry about the guy in net doing something stupid if they made a mistake. He's not a guy who's going to give you 1.68 GAA goaltending across a postseason on the way to the Cup. He can be the guy who gives you say 2.25 GAA goaltending and makes timely saves when needed and gets you through a postseason, though.

 

[Brian39]

This is a good point, and reminds me of what I thought about Allen's game. His best play was when he kept things simple: sound positioning, not overthinking things, letting the play come to him. When he decided to think about it, decided to get a little adventurous, decided to try and rely on his reflexes to bail him out and cut corners, that's where he routinely got burned. Ultimately, Allen's problem was that he knew he had talent and tried to get by on that too often, and he wouldn't play smart as a result and he'd give up a (really) bad goal and suck the energy out of the team.

Binnington? As you note, he's not as talented. He has to overcome that by playing smart. That's what he did in 2019. He kept things simple, didn't make bad plays, and it earned the trust of the guys in front of him because they no longer needed to worry about the guy in net doing something stupid if they made a mistake. He's not a guy who's going to give you 1.68 GAA goaltending across a postseason on the way to the Cup. He can be the guy who gives you say 2.25 GAA goaltending and makes timely saves when needed and gets you through a postseason, though.

Probably a nitpick, but I'm not sure I agree. Allen is a better athlete and has quicker reflexes, but I'm not sure that equates to being more talented in general. Binner is a better skater than Allen and it isn't particularly close. Skating talent in goal is often overlooked in favor of reflexes/flexibility and general upper body skills. However, strong edgework in net is more important than it has ever been and requires a ton of skill. Binner's lateral movement is as explosive as Allen's, but his incredible edgework prevents him from oversliding and pulling himself out of position. That is a major skill.

Hutton and Elliott were/are battlers who don't have a single elite skill and rely only on smarts. Binner also relies on smarts/positioning but supports that positioning with truly top-end skating. Again, I know that this is a nitpick, but the fundamentals of his skating get overlooked. The removal of the bulky plastic cowlings from goalie skates probably saved his career because he perfectly exploits the increased mobility.

 

[BigTruzz]

Haven't seen Kyrou play this year, but his numbers are nice. How sustainable do ya'll think his current performance is?

 

[Brockon]

I'm really hesitant to put us top 8 in the poll, I think we're in that 9-12 slot as we're showing now.

I think we can push a 2nd round series to 6-7 games and Binnington might steal a few key games to push us into the semi-finals, but we're not going to be favorites by any means to make a final again without a more cohesive effort on the ice.

 

[GoldenSeal]

Defense needs to be more physical. We are having an issue with them backing in too far again IMO. Second thing is that dreadful power play. No way they can compete if that continues. We need a couple of bounces in a bad way. It can become contagious, guys grabbing their sticks too tight. Zona definitely gets under their skin and disrupts their cycles. Look for something different on the PP. RELAX. Jake Virtanen now on the Block. Better watch your 6 Zach Sanford. That is all!

Need to buy at the TDL

 

[Note Worthy]

Haven't seen Kyrou play this year, but his numbers are nice. How sustainable do ya'll think his current performance is?

Hard to say. He's looked very good but I'm hesitant to say it will sustainable. It could be but we just don't know at this point.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Need to buy at the TDL

What do you buy, and what do you buy with? Asking as a general question, not pointing this directly at you.

If we're talking a "shake it up" move to kick-start guys, you can do that at any time but it still begs the question of what does that look like? Whatever we do has to fit into our cap structure for this season, which means we really have to trade dollar-for-dollar. Can you find players around the league that other teams would want to move that we'd want to have here and then identify pieces here we'd like to move that other teams would want and have that match practically dollar-for-dollar? The cap alone makes it difficult to move picks/prospects out, and I'm loathe to do that right now seeing as how the prospect depth is really thin right now after you take out Perunovich, Hofer and perhaps Neighbours. (I'm not counting Kyrou and Mikkola in the prospect camp right now - but even if we did, we clearly don't want to move Kyrou and I think Mikkola has somewhat limited value.)

It doesn't fix that Parayko looks like he's at about 60%, Dunn oscillates between spectacularly good and spectacularly bad and sometimes is both on back-to-back shifts, Sanford looks at times like he's trying to get through the season with the fewest number of dings possible, and so on. I don't know that a trade fixes those things. Some of that has to come from within the locker room. Maybe we sit Parayko to try and get him healthy, focus on keeping a top-4 spot in the meantime, then pull everyone back together and see if we're ready to play desperate hockey. I just don't know that a trade fixes everything, or even a few things.

 

[Ranksu]

Need to buy at the TDL

Rather sell. I want more picks for future draft(s) this Team cant win at first round Vegas.