Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The St. Louis Blues dominated a game for long stretches but failed to put the puck in the net and bury their opponent. Usually the story plays out with the Blues then giving up a goal and falling late in the game. On Thursday night against the LA Kings, the story ended with a loss in the shootout, but the overall pattern remained the same. The Blues controlled the game for long stretches and had a ton of chances but they once again failed to put the Kings away when they had the chance.
The mythical “Killer Instinct” appears to still be missing. It’s early, but Thursday night’s game looked all too familiar. This game should have never made it to the shootout. It should have never made it to OT. The Blues should have won this contest with relative easy and by a two or three goal margin. Credit can be given to Jonathan Quick for keeping the Kings in it, but you have to wonder if it’s going to be more of the same for the Blues. Almost instinctively, the Blues allow good opponents to hang around. That may be a chicken or the egg argument, but the Blues seem to be unable to finish out an opponent and put a game out of reach.
Obviously you can’t make too many generalization this early and with this many new faces, but experienced fans probably knew what was coming. The Blues poured it on, but fans could feel a loss coming as each chance sailed high or wide.
Granted, it’s early. Very early. Still, this pattern dates back several years. A shootout loss against the defending champions isn’t something worth getting angry about, but it proved that the Blues still have some old habits to break. They were a bit unlucky to come out of LA with just one point and perhaps we should all be content by their overall effort and hope the trend of coming up short against high-quality teams will eventually come to an end, especially when it matters most.
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