The St. Louis Blues...look bad

[Halak Ness Monster]

One of Hitches biggest failure was lack of adjusting. He was great in the regular season because teams didn't play the Blues in a 7 game series. Once that happened it was easy for other teams to adjust when playing the Blues. I know, you are going to say "but they made it to the WC once!"

Yes... once... BFD. How every other time the Blues were supposed to be a force and went out round 1 and once round 2.

Hitch was one of the best regular season coaches of all time but couldn't get it done in the playoffs. And before you say he won a cup, my grandma could have coached that Stars team and won a cup. Hitch was let go soon after that cup and big shocker, he was only good on good teams. He was smart and only coached good teams. Except CBJ. Once he realized that was hopeless he stepped away. E ter the Blues, the supposed next best NHL team and he was all over it.... and took a team that should have won a cup to the WCF once. And a bunch of early exits.

He is not a good playoffs coach at all.

I don't blame Hitch for losing to LA and Chicago. If you'll notice, most teams lost to them from 2012 to 2014. I think the only teams to knock them out when we lost to them were LA and Chicago. They were very good. It was Joel Quenneville vs. the Detroit Red Wings circa 1997 to 2001.

It's very difficult to beat the best teams when your talent is clearly behind. Joel Quenneville fixed his problem by joining the best team in Chicago.

Then Jake Allen murdered our chances in 2015 vs. Minnesota. Go back and watch the film. Hitchcock made great adjustments after a terrible Game 3 loss. We dominated Game 4 and the beginning of Game 5. That's when Allen completely melted down.

As for his Dallas Stars days, he beat the Colorado Avalanche in back to back WCF Game 7's. Give me a break about taking any of his Dallas accomplishments from Hitchcock.

I strongly disagree with a lot of what you said.

 

[stokes84]

Slow team makes big acquisition of slow player. What could go wrong?

O’Reilly is a good player and will be one of the best players on your team, but he really needs to be on a team with good speed around him. I sort of feel bad for him, because other than the season in which Colorado made the playoffs, he’s generally been on the wrong type of team to really utilize his skill set.

 

[BrokenFace]

Slow team makes big acquisition of slow player. What could go wrong?

O’Reilly is a good player and will be one of the best players on your team, but he really needs to be on a team with good speed around him. I sort of feel bad for him, because other than the season in which Colorado made the playoffs, he’s generally been on the wrong type of team to really utilize his skill set.

The offense has been fine though. The Blues aren't fast but they've been scoring anyway and ROR is a big part of it. And these aren't garbage time goals. The Blues have been taking the lead, often by more than 1 goal, in a lot of their games.



Allen has proven he isn't an NHL starter, maybe not even a decent backup, but look at the goals against this year and tell me how any other goalie would do. Even an elite goalie would have a sub .900 save %, and it's not like any elite goalies were available this offseason

 

[BrokenFace]

I don't blame Hitch for losing to LA and Chicago. If you'll notice, most teams lost to them from 2012 to 2014. I think the only teams to knock them out when we lost to them were LA and Chicago. They were very good. It was Joel Quenneville vs. the Detroit Red Wings circa 1997 to 2001.

It's very difficult to beat the best teams when your talent is clearly behind. Joel Quenneville fixed his problem by joining the best team in Chicago.

Then Jake Allen murdered our chances in 2015 vs. Minnesota. Go back and watch the film. Hitchcock made great adjustments after a terrible Game 3 loss. We dominated Game 4 and the beginning of Game 5. That's when Allen completely melted down.

As for his Dallas Stars days, he beat the Colorado Avalanche in back to back WCF Game 7's. Give me a break about taking any of his Dallas accomplishments from Hitchcock.

I strongly disagree with a lot of what you said.

I agree with you about Hitch in general, but blaming Allen for 2015 is crazy to me. I feel like Blues fans will never blame the offense if there's any chance to blame the goalie.

Only in St. Louis could an offense average 2.33 (that's with 6 goals coming in one blowout) goals per game in a series against the Wild and the goalie gets the blame.

In the 2013 series against the Kings Brian Elliot had a GAA average under 2 and people still blame him for untimely goals.

Allen is a problem, but replace him with anyone short of prime Hasek and the team would still be losing. This defense is playing far below NHL standards this season

 

[Halak Ness Monster]

I agree with you about Hitch in general, but blaming Allen for 2015 is crazy to me. I feel like Blues fans will never blame the offense if there's any chance to blame the goalie.

Only in St. Louis could an offense average 2.33 (that's with 6 goals coming in one blowout) goals per game in a series against the Wild and the goalie gets the blame.

In the 2013 series against the Kings Brian Elliot had a GAA average under 2 and people still blame him for untimely goals.

Allen is a problem, but replace him with anyone short of prime Hasek and the team would still be losing. This defense is playing far below NHL standards this season

You've got to go back and watch the goals that were scored against in Games 5 and 6. I don't care about any of the games before that. We had a brand new series going into Game 5 at home. We were DOMINATING game 5 until Allen let in a big softie to make it 1-1.

Allen's play completely took the wind out of our sails in that game and he let in 2-3 more softies in Game 5.

I'll never forget the look on Hitchcock's face in Game 6 after Allen let in a horrendous goal in Minnesota. It said "You gotta be shi**ing me." The 2 goals Allen gave up were so bad. Allen looked like he wanted to sprawl out on the ice and cry right before getting pulled in Game 6.

Sidenote: I really don't blame Allen for our struggles now. Our defense is miserable.

 

[BrokenFace]

You've got to go back and watch the goals that were scored against in Games 5 and 6. I don't care about any of the games before that. We had a brand new series going into Game 5 at home. We were DOMINATING game 5 until Allen let in a big softie to make it 1-1.

Allen's play completely took the wind out of our sails in that game and he let in 2-3 more softies in Game 5.

I'll never forget the look on Hitchcock's face in Game 6 after Allen let in a horrendous goal in Minnesota. It said "You gotta be shi**ing me." The 2 goals Allen gave up were so bad. Allen looked like he wanted to sprawl out on the ice and cry right before getting pulled in Game 6.

Sidenote: I really don't blame Allen for our struggles now. Our defense is miserable.

I can see your point, but the offense still only scored 2 goals total in games 5 and 6. If we blame Allen for the bad offense, then we should blame the uninspiring offense for Allen's softies to a degree.

Either way, Allen in general has shown he's not good enough at this point.

 

[Curufinwe]

Wanna swap coaches?

 

[KingBran]

I don't blame Hitch for losing to LA and Chicago. If you'll notice, most teams lost to them from 2012 to 2014. I think the only teams to knock them out when we lost to them were LA and Chicago. They were very good. It was Joel Quenneville vs. the Detroit Red Wings circa 1997 to 2001.

It's very difficult to beat the best teams when your talent is clearly behind. Joel Quenneville fixed his problem by joining the best team in Chicago.

Then Jake Allen murdered our chances in 2015 vs. Minnesota. Go back and watch the film. Hitchcock made great adjustments after a terrible Game 3 loss. We dominated Game 4 and the beginning of Game 5. That's when Allen completely melted down.

As for his Dallas Stars days, he beat the Colorado Avalanche in back to back WCF Game 7's. Give me a break about taking any of his Dallas accomplishments from Hitchcock.

I strongly disagree with a lot of what you said.

And I strongly disagree with what you say. Hitch was a coach who only worked for good teams and even then he was only good in the regular season. His teams should have won a few more cups and didn't.

You know how I know you are full of it? You are blaming Jake Allen for 2015 playoff failure. Really dude? You blame Allen for that? I am NOT an Allen fan but that series was far from being Allens fault.

Here is how the scores went in that series.
4-2 MIN
1-4 STL
0-3 MIN
6-1 STL
4-1 MIN
1-4 MIN

So lets look at t he losses. In those losses the Blues scored 2, 0, 1, 1 goals. I don't care who your goalie is - scoring 1.00 GPG in the playoffs you are not going to win any games. I am not saying Allen was fantastic or anything but if you really are one of those people who blame Allen for the 2015 playoffs you need to re-think what kind of offense you need to win in the playoffs. Hitch could not adjust his team and they played a defensive shell all series hoping they could win with that strategy. If "great adjustments" is actually scoring more than 1 or 2 goals for ONE game to you then it's hopeless.

You are basically blaming Allen for not getting a shutout in 2 of those losses and doing even better than a shutout (not even possible) for one of those losses because you don't think the Blues needed more than 1 goal per game to win? Come on man, be smarter than that.

 

[Kranix]

 

[Halak Ness Monster]

You know how I know you are full of it? You are blaming Jake Allen for 2015 playoff failure. Really dude? You blame Allen for that? I am NOT an Allen fan but that series was far from being Allens fault.

Game 5


-Goals 1 and 4 are absolutely terrible. Goal 2 isn't anything unstoppable either. Goal 1 took the air out of the building. Minnesota was being outshot like 12-1 at that point.



-Goals 1 and 2 are some of the worst playoff goals I've seen a Blues goalie give up. Hence why Allen was yanked off ice. He looks like he wants to cry.

You say Hitchcock can't make adjustments. Then you posted the scores where the Blues got tossed around in Game 3 and then tossed around Minnesota in Game 4.
Unfortunately you didn't watch those games so you don't remember that the Blues were dominating Minnesota in Game 5 until Jake Allen gave them life with a softie first goal.

I don't absolve the offense of blame. The whole team was bad in Games 1-3.
But it's so odd that some fans don't remember just how bad Jake Allen was in Games 5 and 6 after Hitchcock and the rest of the team made adjustments. He just kept sucking life out of the team.

 

[KingBran]

Dude. You can post whatever video's you want. Allen did not blow that for the Blues. The Blues terrible O and Hitch's gameplan (like every other early playoff exit) was more to blame. Was Allen great? No. Was he the ONE at fault? No.

The fact that so many of you blame Allen when the Blues scored 0-1, sometimes 2 goals is just dumb. You HAVE to score to win. #1 principal in sports. Blues weren't doing that. But yeah, lets pile on Allen who actually was playing a lot better than he is now and you are saying he is great now.

 

[MNNumbers]

Wild fan reading with interest because your coach was ours. (We don't want him back, btw).

Watching those videos, I see Goal 1 in Game 5 as a softie, but I also see several grade A chances turned away by Dubnyk before the Wild scored again. So, I'm not sure I'd say that the goal turned the momentum (although I wasn't there, of course). But I would say that, in general, Dubnyk outplayed Allen, and that's a great reason Minnesota won Game 5.

Game 6: Those are 2 bad goals. Again, I say that Dubnyk over the STL goalies was the reason for the result here.

Right now, however, I would say that your team has 2 issues. Mediocre goaltending, and a coach who preaches his system, but can't right the ship when it starts to go over (We saw Yeo with this many times in Minnesota. The one we liked was the year the GM got Dubnyk in a trade, and he played total lights out for 30 games and got us into the playoffs. The worst was the year that Minnesota was tops in the league after 20 games, and things went south, and they didn't even make the playoffs. That's all on Yeo.).

 

[Halak Ness Monster]

Dude. You can post whatever video's you want.

So you don't want to view obvious proof that you're wrong? Gotcha.

We're done here.

 

[JoshFromMO]

The worst was the year that Minnesota was tops in the league after 20 games, and things went south, and they didn't even make the playoffs. That's all on Yeo.).

That sounds oddly like last season in St. Louis lol

 

[Duke749]

Funny what goaltending does to a “team”.

 

[Kamiccolo]

It’s still a bit too early to draw any conclusions about the Blues, but I think it’s becoming clear that they were overrated in the off-season.

That Bozak signing is just god awful. On pace for a 30 point season and -5. Parayko is also terribly overrated holy.

 

[Halak Ness Monster]

Watching those videos, I see Goal 1 in Game 5 as a softie, but I also see several grade A chances turned away by Dubnyk before the Wild scored again. So, I'm not sure I'd say that the goal turned the momentum (although I wasn't there, of course). But I would say that, in general, Dubnyk outplayed Allen, and that's a great reason Minnesota won Game 5.

Game 6: Those are 2 bad goals. Again, I say that Dubnyk over the STL goalies was the reason for the result here.

The Wild completely dominated a large portion of the 2nd period of Game 5. Those grade A chances were rare in the 2nd. The Blues came out strong in the 3rd period but Allen continued to be Swiss cheese.

No doubt Dubnyk played great in Games 5 and 6. I don't take that away from him. A goalie has to step up in order for a team to win a series. Dubnyk did while Allen crumbled.

Allen got his revenge in 2017, though. He was outstanding.

Right now, however, I would say that your team has 2 issues. Mediocre goaltending, and a coach who preaches his system, but can't right the ship when it starts to go over (We saw Yeo with this many times in Minnesota. The one we liked was the year the GM got Dubnyk in a trade, and he played total lights out for 30 games and got us into the playoffs. The worst was the year that Minnesota was tops in the league after 20 games, and things went south, and they didn't even make the playoffs. That's all on Yeo.).

It may seem odd but I don't think Allen is doing horribly. Yeo's system is just terrible for these defensemen. We seem to be giving up a lot more high danger scoring chances that we have in a long time.

We have to fix the defensive structure before anything else. That likely starts with a new coach.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

That Bozak signing is just god awful. On pace for a 30 point season and -5. Parayko is also terribly overrated holy.

Oh yeah, Bozak was obviously a terrible signing at the time. Perron and ROR have been producing so far, but I don’t expect that to continue either. Their off-season acquisitions were incredibly overrated.

 

[EurlichBachman]

Oh yeah, Bozak was obviously a terrible signing at the time. Perron and ROR have been producing so far, but I don’t expect that to continue either. Their off-season acquisitions were incredibly overrated.

Explain why you don't expect ROR and Perron to continue producing. Bozak was likely a signing that happened because they didn't think ROR was going to work out. Had the ROR trade happened a day earlier I really don't think Bozak gets signed. Even still, its a 3 year deal. Many worse contracts have been handed out.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

Explain why you don't expect ROR and Perron to continue producing. Bozak was likely a signing that happened because they didn't think ROR was going to work out. Had the ROR trade happened a day earlier I really don't think Bozak gets signed. Even still, its a 3 year deal. Many worse contracts have been handed out.

They’re on pace for career highs by like 15-40 points. It is very, very rare that middle aged players suddenly bust out career high seasons that far above their career average.

Just cause worse contracts have been signed doesn’t mean that Bozak’s contract is anything but terrible. If somebody punches you in the face and steals your wallet, are you going to say “not a big deal, Hitler did something much worse”?

 

[EurlichBachman]

They’re on pace for career highs by like 15-40 points. It is very, very rare that middle aged players suddenly bust out career high seasons that far above their career average.

Just cause worse contracts have been signed doesn’t mean that Bozak’s contract is anything but terrible. If somebody punches you in the face and steals your wallet, are you going to say “not a big deal, Hitler did something much worse”?

They may not put up career high numbers (even though Perron just did last year), but that doesn't mean they are just going to stop producing.

There are varying levels of a bad contract. His is far from terrible. In his career he has been roughly a 45-50 point center. The whole team has gotten off to a slow start obviously. I imagine it will pick up at some point here.

 

[KingBran]

So you don't want to view obvious proof that you're wrong? Gotcha.

We're done here.

Nope. You are just ignoring the stats and basing everything you say off of your rose-colored glasses perception. Which is wrong.

I am fine with being done here. You don't get it.

 

[Pierce Hawthorne]

People gave me all kinds of shit earlier this summer for saying the Blues weren't a good team.


Kind of funny. They have awful goaltending and an underwhelming Defense. And even the forward depth isn't what people thought it would be.


Not a good team on paper or in performance.

 

[EurlichBachman]

Nope. You are just ignoring the stats and basing everything you say off of your rose-colored glasses perception. Which is wrong.

I am fine with being done here. You don't get it.

Two things can be true at once. The offense was bad, no doubt. I think that was a series when Tarasenko had like 50% of the teams goals, maybe more.

The goaltending didn't do the forwards any favors either though. Allen lets in a couple absolutely back breaking goals. Goals that quality NHL goalies should not be letting in. That first goal in game 5 gave Minnesota all the momentum and sucked the energy out of the building. The offense was bad, but that doesn't allow Allen off the hook.

 

[KingBran]

Two things can be true at once. The offense was bad, no doubt. I think that was a series when Tarasenko had like 50% of the teams goals, maybe more.

The goaltending didn't do the forwards any favors either though. Allen lets in a couple absolutely back breaking goals. Goals that quality NHL goalies should not be letting in. That first goal gave Minnesota all the momentum and sucked the energy out of the building. The offense was bad, but that doesn't allow Allen off the hook.

That's what I have been saying, Allen wasn't great. But acting like Allen was all at fault. Or that he killed the energy... etc. the Blues were doomed from the start then. GOOD teams - the offence picks up a guy when he lets in a bad goal here and there. Instead, the Blues responded by moping around and not scoring any goals. Which leads back to coaching and Hitch.

Putting so much blame on Allen is ridiculous. I have seen Crawford, Holtby, and heck even Roy and Brodeur let in some pretty bad goals in the playoffs. Difference is their team and coaching were able to overcome those situations. That's what good teams with a good coach do. The Blues and Hitch were not set up to be a good playoff team. You would be hard pressed to find ANY goalie that won a cup saying they played perfect and never let in a softie the entire playoffs on their way to the cup.

Acting like its OK for the team to go into a state of depression when Allen lets in one or two junky goals in a series and using that as an excuse to not score more than 1 goal a game in your losses is mind boggling. No wonder goalies hate playing in STL. They can't manage them and they get blamed for everything.