ESPN REPORT: So Sad, St. Louis Blues Head Coach Has Been Issued A…
All of a sudden, the energy has vanished.
Despite losing to the Maple Leafs 4-2 on Monday afternoon, St. Louis’ confidence bubble from January and February didn’t completely burst. However, it did take another whack.
“Three errors cost us,” Blues acting coach Drew Bannister stated.
The Blues lost back-to-back games for the first time in over a month, and they have now dropped three of their last four games. The Blues have only dropped their past three games since Bannister assumed the team’s reins in mid-December. The other two instances were on December 29–30 and January 13–18.
With the score knotted at one going into the third quarter, the Blues gave up two back-breaking goals to Toronto on special teams before trading goals with the St. Louis extra attacker in the game’s last two minutes.
45 seconds into the third quarter, Auston Matthews scored on a power play, taking advantage of Jordan Kyrou’s high-sticking penalty and a mistake by the Blues penalty kill. In less than seven minutes, Pavel Buchnevich mishandled a puck exchange with Torey Krug in the attacking zone, allowing William Nylander to score shorthanded.
22 seconds into the second half, following a Nick Leddy mistake and a move around Colton Parayko, Matthew Knies scored to give Toronto a 1-0 lead.
Bannister stated, “We made mistakes that ended up in the back of our net tonight, which is why we didn’t win a game.” “They weren’t repeated errors; rather, they were errors that occurred frequently. Looking over the entirety of the game, I believe we performed fairly well. didn’t give up many opportunities—we had eleven vs maybe nine against.
Goalie Joel Hofer, making his first start in almost a week, made 25 saves as the Blues were led by goals from Brandon Saad (power play) and Pavel Buchnevich (extra attacker).
For the most part, Bannister and the Blues were pleased with how they performed on Monday afternoon. According to Natural Stat Trick, they appeared to have a fair amount of the puck and held possession of 55.2% of the five-on-five shot attempts. However, the Blues were unable to convert that into significant scoring opportunities.
The Maple Leafs stopped 26 shots that the Blues attempted. Forty more times, St. Louis failed to hit the goal. Thus, even though the Blues had a 63-47 advantage in shot attempts, Toronto outshot them 29–21.
