GDT: Philly vs. Blues | 7pm CST ESPN+ & Hulu

[GoldenSeal]

Cause they play binner in most of them and he stinks this year and the team has zero will to fight (score 5+ goals) for those starts. so they just pack it in and call it a day.

I didn’t know Binny played all positions and should have scored more goals too.

Give it a damn rest, the team looks like trash and ain’t showing up.

 

[Ranksu]

Faulk -3

 

[Reality Czech]

My question after reading through Chief’s responses: Does Chief still have the room? Cause it sure don’t sound like it. He knows the problem is arrogance but can’t right it?

Blows my mind.

We got a group of ride or die boys in Springfield, just saying. Reward some call ups and sit down some regulars, send a damn message.

It's a reasonable question to ask. Obviously Chief has the full support of the veterans, but you have to wonder if the younger/newer guys on the team are tuning him out. Kyrou is a concern because you don't want him to feel like he's being picked on or singled out too much, but he also has to play a strong team game to fit in with this team. You don't wanna alienate your top scorer and a key piece of the team's future. Thomas was invisible as well, though he might not have been at 100% coming back from illness. Whatever the reason, there is no damn reason that our 4th line should look more effective than our very talented top 3 lines.

All of that said, the game was there for the taking despite the poor start. Tarasenko looked very determined to make things happen last night, but he also missed the net on two golden chances in the 3rd that could have tied the game. We had 5-10 solid chances to get that tying goal and just couldn't convert, which was then followed by the predictable 4th goal for the Flyers to put it away. Brown looked pretty lazy coming back on that goal and we have too many guys puck watching instead of being engaged in the play.

I'd like to say this should be a wake up call for the team, but there have been plenty of similar games in the past few months that clearly didn't wake them up. At least we are still in a good position to finish 2nd in the division, but the team needs to get their head outta their asses pretty quick.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

Faulk -3

+31 on the season. Or how about actually bring something of substance instead of stat watching.

 

[Stealth JD]

Home game against a struggling team? Incoming 5-2 loss with about 18 minutes of full effort

You did this.

 

[TheOrganist]

Big Chief fan but this team has been identityless for much of the year and that becomes an indictment on the Coach at some point. I'm aware we don't have an All-World D core but the lack of any sort of defensive structure from period to period much less game to game is hard to watch.

 

[Ranksu]

+31 on the season. Or how about actually bring something of substance instead of stat watching.

click video

 

[Reality Czech]

Big Chief fan but this team has been identityless for much of the year and that becomes an indictment on the Coach at some point. I'm aware we don't have an All-World D core but the lack of any sort of defensive structure from period to period much less game to game is hard to watch.

That's a fair point. I also wonder how many true leaders we have on the team to set the right example. In 2019, it seems like Steen was the de factor leader of the team along with Petro, ROR, Schenn, Tarasenko and the well-respected Bouwmeester, who apparently didn't say much but commanded attention whenever he did. Bouw is the kind of guy teammates will lay it on the line for, and they could see how he handled himself on and off the ice. Pretty sure no one worked harder than him and Steener. We also had a tight group with Schwartz, Maroon, and Edmundson being popular, well-liked teammates. That team played for each other, which is the main reason they won the Cup.

I imagine the loss of those guys represented a shift in the identity of the team, and they haven't really found a concrete identity since then. A team has to be more than a group of guys who play hockey together for 60 minutes. Of course it takes time to develop an identity, but it seems to me we have a lot of guys playing as individuals and not really coming together as one cohesive unit.

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Arrogance
Complacency
Leadership Failure

Fix the above and we are fine. Otherwise, we either miss the playoffs or get easily knocked out in the 1st round. The bad habits we see far too often this season like not getting shots on net for ten minutes, not supporting the puck, making lazy passes, not backchecking, etc, are not going away. We are less than 20 games from regular season completion and we are 7-6-2 in our last 15 games. This is bad. Very bad.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

click video

Ok? He just like everyone else had a crap game, hes been our most consistenly good player this year. You care more about wanting to be right about those "midgets" Krug and Faulk being bad, which they aren't, than wanting the Blues to be a good team.

 

[Blueston]

Arrogance
Complacency
Leadership Failure

Fix the above and we are fine. Otherwise, we either miss the playoffs or get easily knocked out in the 1st round. The bad habits we see far too often this season like not getting shots on net for ten minutes, not supporting the puck, making lazy passes, not backchecking, etc, are not going away. We are less than 20 games from regular season completion and we are 7-6-2 in our last 15 games. This is bad. Very bad.

Thomas and Kyrou are key to team. The vets generally show up but those 2 can be difference makers. When they float entire team tends to get dispirited.

 

[Stealth JD]

Krug sucked last night. Trade the bum.

Seriously though, I’m going to cringe when the Blues get unceremoniously punked in the playoffs and all we have to show for it is a new three-year deal for our coach. His shelf-life is uncertain and his team has been stale since the Covid-shutdown. Stillman and Army are too loyal to think it was a possibility; but I’d have fired Chief before giving him three more years…but would have postponed any decision until after the playoffs were over.

 

[MissouriMook]

I disagree. Berube just needs to be a strict dad with Kyrou right now. And Kyrou needs to realize he sees the ice a lot differently than the other players on the team. He's going to be a star, but, he has to remember that he's on a team as well.

I think making him a healthy scratch for a game might be what he needs.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Krug sucked last night. Trade the bum.

Seriously though, I’m going to cringe when the Blues get unceremoniously punked in the playoffs and all we have to show for it is a new three-year deal for our coach. His shelf-life is uncertain and his team has been stale since the Covid-shutdown. Stillman and Army are too loyal to think it was a possibility; but I’d have fired Chief before giving him three more years…but would have postponed any decision until after the playoffs were over.

Does Berube get any credit for the development of Kyrou and Thomas, among others?

I expected his teams to be defensive grinders, and we’ve seen plenty of that style over the years. The Blues play more of an offensively creative game than I expected. It’s really fun to watch when it’s on. But they seem to have lost their ability to play suffocating defense as a 5-man unit. It’s hard to watch them get outshot and outchanced period after period. The amount of offensive talent allows them to overcome that with a better shooting percentage. That’s not just good luck shooting, it’s better talent. But I don’t see this as a style that will translate to the postseason.

They have a few weeks to batten down the hatches and relearn the type of shot suppression that served them during the Cup run. I think Leddy can help there. If Berube can’t get them to do that any better than they are now, I doubt he’ll ever coach a contending team in St Louis again.

Mayeb when all is said and done, the Cup run will end up just being a glorious confluence of improbabilities where Binnington played over his head and Berube pushed the right buttons at the right times like an evil genius….but turned out not to be one after all. I can live with that, but I still think this year’s team has a level within reach which could stir things up in the postseason. Colorado is a pretty high bar though, and a lot of very good teams may not be able to beat them.

 

[execwrite1]

I give up

 

[ChicagoBlues]

click video

I loved Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Steve Martin’s best work ever.

 

[Stealth JD]

Does Berube get any credit for the development of Kyrou and Thomas, among others?

I expected his teams to be defensive grinders, and we’ve seen plenty of that style over the years. The Blues play more of an offensively creative game than I expected. It’s really fun to watch when it’s on. But they seem to have lost their ability to play suffocating defense as a 5-man unit. It’s hard to watch them get outshot and outchanced period after period. The amount of offensive talent allows them to overcome that with a better shooting percentage. That’s not just good luck shooting, it’s better talent. But I don’t see this as a style that will translate to the postseason.

They have a few weeks to batten down the hatches and relearn the type of shot suppression that served them during the Cup run. I think Leddy can help there. If Berube can’t get them to do that any better than they are now, I doubt he’ll ever coach a contending team in St Louis again.

Mayeb when all is said and done, the Cup run will end up just being a glorious confluence of improbabilities where Binnington played over his head and Berube pushed the right buttons at the right times like an evil genius….but turned out not to be one after all. I can live with that, but I still think this year’s team has a level within reach which could stir things up in the postseason. Colorado is a pretty high bar though, and a lot of very good teams may not be able to beat them.

Sure he gets credit. I actually think he's a very good coach.
But this team needs a boost, or kick in the pants that the trade-deadline didn't deliver.
Routinely getting outplayed and relying on great goaltending, high shooting percentages and superior special teams to carry them past formidable playoff opponents isn't a very realistic or sustainable approach. They're basically going to need to find lightning in a bottle to win more than a round. And short of gambling on Husso to do a 2019-Binner impersonation in these playoffs, the most likely source of lightning would be in a coaching-change. A Boudreau-bump if you will. Worked for the Penguins with Sullivan in '16, and Sutter and the Kings in '12.

Maybe Army thinks this is a winning roster and he's ready to rock-and-roll with the group he assembled. But if you need a temporary boost in performance, and you're not willing to pay assets to acquire personnel to help on the ice; drop a bomb on the locker-room and make the players collectively get their heads back in the game under a new coach.

 

[eibyyz]

Tortorella: Tanned/rested/ready.

 

[Mike Liut]

I’ll tell you exactly the problem with this team. We have got away from our identity of a heavy team that plays physical. We’ve added guys like Kyrou, Thomas and Saad to the team and we have lost our identity. We are relying on skill and speed and that’s not who we are. Too many nights they don’t want to put in the hard and try to win with speed and skill. We aren’t skilled enough to win that way regularly, especially when we aren’t getting .930 save percentage nightly.

 

[Mike Liut]

Skill and speed are fine, but you better play a full 200 foot game with it.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

I’ll tell you exactly the problem with this team. We have got away from our identity of a heavy team that plays physical. We’ve added guys like Kyrou, Thomas and Saad to the team and we have lost our identity. We are relying on skill and speed and that’s not who we are. Too many nights they don’t want to put in the hard and try to win with speed and skill. We aren’t skilled enough to win that way regularly, especially when we aren’t getting .930 save percentage nightly.

Here we go with the "we gotta be big and mean" thing again. So what do we just trade away all of our skill for a bunch of grinders?

 

[BlueOil]

Here we go with the "we gotta be big and mean" thing again. So what do we just trade away all of our skill for a bunch of grinders?

although i don't recommend it, it worked for the rangers

 

[Linkens Mastery]

although i don't recommend it, it worked for the rangers

Rangers are being carried by their goaltending by all measurable statistics

 

[BlueOil]

Rangers are being carried by their goaltending by all measurable statistics

yup, shesterkyn must be why they have the 2nd best powerplay in the league /s

(you typed all...)

 

[Linkens Mastery]

yup, shesterkyn must be why they have the 2nd best powerplay in the league /s

(you typed all...)

Ok most, but, look where a team like the Islanders are. Great defensively and can't score to save their life. The NHL is moving towards a more skilled high pace style. Sticking with the crash and grind style is going to end up with the Blues being left behind.