It’s time to air some grievances about the St. Louis Blues

Festivus is here which means it’s time to air some grievances. Friend of the blog Geoff Upchurch graciously chipped in some grievances pointed at the St. Louis Blues.

It’s that time of year again, and not even that mythical beast known as a full 60-minute game played last night against the Boston Bruins can hold it back. I come bearing grievances against the 2015-16 St. Louis Blues, and they are many:

Playing a Full Three Periods
This is probably foremost in many Blues fans minds at the moment, so let me get it out of the way right at the top. Far too often this season, the Blues have decided that this means “play three full periods over the course of two games”. It’s cost them points in the standings, goodwill of casual viewers, and has enraged many of the hard core of fans.

Playing Against Backup Goalies
I’ve been thinking for years now: How do the Blues manage to make every backup goalie in the league look like 2011-12 Playoffs Jonathan Quick? I mean, this has to take a special level of talent. By sheer virtue of good/bad bounces of the puck, it shouldn’t keep going on like this, and yet it does. In fairness, this grievance could be aired against the Cardinals as well, if you replace “backup goaltenders” with “soft-tossing lefties, especially rookies”.

Giving Up All the Lines on Defense
Watching the game against the Flyers only reiterated this, but plenty of other teams do it, too. Stand up and stop the rush at the red line, and/or the blue line. For Pronger’s sake, at least don’t back all the way into the slot 90% of the time.

Sloppy Offensive Play
Especially as more skill players get off the injured list. Yes, you guys are creative, I get it. You’re not the 2011-12 Blues anymore, and you’re not built to just bull through everybody and win on tenacity. Yet and still, the cross-ice passes through two or three defenders above the faceoff dots have got to stop.

Resiliency and Roaring Bacon
For about the first month of the season, the Blues were great at this. Unfortunately, Roar Bacon was basically the high point, and the team spent the next month and a half not showing that same spark. I’d ask for consistency, but I have this sneaking suspicion that I’d be rewarded with more W/L/W/L/W/L tacked on to the record.

Brian Elliott
Nothing against Jake Allen, who’s busy proving his bonafides as a #1 starter in the NHL, but this is a long-term grievance. The Blues (particularly the coaching staff) clearly have no faith in Elliott’s ability to shoulder the load, regardless of the fact that he set the franchise record for career shutouts, and has put up the counting stats of an elite goaltender from the 2011-12 season on. At this point, it’s clearly too late for him here, and that’s a shame, because the only legitimate shot he ever got, he got because Halak was injured, and the skaters couldn’t penetrate Jonathan Quick’s brick wall act.

The Fourth Line
I’ll admit, I’m jealous of the Islanders fourth line. Fifteen goals and a plus five collectively, compared to the Blues meager three goals and a collective minus eleven. Ideally, a team should want its fourth line to help it win games. If not that, it should at least not hurt them. Maybe, just maybe, that can happen with Ott out of the equation.

Hitchcock After Losses
A few weeks back, I had a discussion with another fan, which basically ended up being, “There should be a website: www.hitchcocks-post-loss-excuse.com”, that fans (or enterprising beat writers) could pull up following Blues losses to get quotes from the coach, because it’s always some combination of “Buy-in”, “Our best players have to be our best players”, “Full sixty-minute game”, “Have to out-work the goalie”, “Didn’t win enough puck battles”, and, more recently, “I don’t know”.

It’s not that any of these things are necessarily false, rather it’s more that if you watch the game, you have a decent chance of guessing which two or three Hitch will trot out in the post-game presser. Meanwhile, if it’s the same four or five basic problems… shouldn’t they have been fixed over the course of four seasons?

And finally, my largest grievance, another one that spans years:

Blues Fans vs. Hawks Games
I don’t mind an opposing fan contingent at games. That makes things fun, and forces a normally fairly passive crowd to get riled up outside of the occasional “honk, honk, honk” horn section or Jeremy Boyer on the organ. That said, when better than half of the arena is filled with opposing jerseys on a Saturday night? That’s downright embarassing, the game on the 14th of November was hideous. If fans can’t get up to pack the house two or three nights a season against the hated and most long-standing division rival, when can they?

Does everybody remember how good it feels to hear “Let’s Go Blues!” ring out in the Predators arena when the Blues go in and thump them around? Yeah, turn that right around, and that’s how bad it feels when half or more of the Scott is filled with Toews and Kane jerseys and the fans in them chanting “Let’s Go Blackhawks!”