Effort

The Blues lost to the Canucks in a shootout. They did not score on four tries. The Blues did score on the powerplay but also gave up two powerplay goals. There are problems with this team and at first I thought that they were outworked by the Canucks. The Canucks spent far more time in the offensive zone than did the Blues. The Blues seem to always be chasing. Then two things I noticed changed my mind. The first was a moment when a Canucks player had the puck behind the net. No Blues player was on him. He was standing there. The Blues were trying to cover their men while one Blue defender stayed in front of the net. The second event was the overtime. The Blues never had possession of the puck it seemed. Four minutes of the five minute overtime were spent in the Blues zone.

These two things make me think the Blues' problem is not effort. It is a combination of coaching and skill. The style of coaching, for lack of a better term, is to stress a cover defense. Each opposing player is covered by a Blue all the time. There were no double teams in the defensive zone that might have caused a turn over. This means that the Canucks are always playing one-on-one in the defensive zone. There is bound to be slipped coverage or mismatch which will lead to a great scoring opportunity. It also means the Blues aren't chasing the puck but other players. The second is that the Blues lack high-end skill players. There are only two players that I would say handle the puck well - Kariya and MacDonald - but they are too small to carry it for long. (Perron shows great promise here. Great hands and seems strong enough to go into the corners.) There are others who handle it adequately - Stempniak, Boyes, etc. - but that won't get them past defenders.

All this means is that the Blues can't create their own scoring opportunities. They have to wait for a mistake or breakdown in their opponents. They cannot dictate play. This is very dangerous and why they are not a good team, even as hard as Manny tries.