ST.
LOUIS – So
many times we’ve seen the St. Louis Blues start to climb that
mountain, only to either stumble or fall back down.
It
wasn’t a fall-back-down moment for them on Monday against the
Anaheim Ducks, but it surely was a stumble.
The
Blues’ anemic offense was on display once again, and Jordan
Binnington was pulled after allowing two goals on five shots, and
some heat was exchanged between he and coach Jim Montgomery. It all
culminated in a 4-1 loss to the Ducks at Enterprise Center, thwarting
the Blues’ chance of their first three-game winning streak of the
season.
Jordan
Kyrou scored, but former Blue Ville Husso stopped 21 shots for the
Ducks (16-9-1), while the Blues fell back to two games under .500
(9-11-7) with the chance to get back to that number heading on a
three-game road trip.
“We’re
scratching and clawing right now to try and find wins,” Blues
defenseman Cam Fowler said. “So it’s disappointing. I’m not
going to make too much more out of it than that.”
Let’s
look at Monday’s observations:
*
Two early goals, a goalie hook – It’s no secret that Binnington
and Joel Hofer had turned their respective games around. Goaltending
for the Blues has not been an issue relatively speaking for the past
month, dating back to the 6-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Nov.
5.
Joel
Hofer was coming off a grinding 1-0 shutout of the Utah Mammoth on
Saturday.
Things
seemed to be turning around, with the chance at going 3-for-3 on home
ice.
But
the two goals that the Ducks scored in the first period, one by Mason
McTavish and one by Pavel Mintuykov, were
deflating goals.
The
one by McTavish at 6:33 of the first period, there’s plenty of
debate on what happened and if it should have been saved – I
believe it should have – that gave the Ducks a 1-0 lead.
First
of all, Dalibor Dvorsky has to be stronger on that puck to get it out
of the zone, instead of just pushing it to the blue line, only to be
kept in. Once it got thrown to the net, Binnington blockered it to
the left side boards where McTavish whipped it right back at the net
and beat Binnington short side. Yes, the puck caromed off Fowler but
really no change of direction and from distance. Logan Mailloux was
skating through the vision but appeared to be off the eyes of
Binnington long enough that if he just covers the short side, it hits
him and the game stays scoreless:🚨 Mac-T 🚨He snaps that one home! #FlyTogetherpic.twitter.com/q9eC9U7FaQ— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) December 2, 2025
Kyrou
got the equalizer 20 seconds later on a solid forecheck by Jake
Neighbours, an even better dangle and backhand pass by Robert Thomas
to the backside post and finish to make it 1-1:How ’bout that for a response? #stlbluespic.twitter.com/4VeohbbEJR— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) December 2, 2025
But
again, after a Blues power play had expired, Mintyukov took a chipped
puck into the Blues’ zone and the right circle. Justin Faulk
defended him well, kept him to the outer edge of the right circle. He
was at the end of a shift and just basically wanted to put a puck on
net and get off, but did one better:🚨 Minty 🚨What a snipe! We lead 2-1! #FlyTogetherpic.twitter.com/MRvrrTKLJi— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) December 2, 2025
“I
was alone; I’m not going to try and take (the) ‘D’ 1-on-1,”
Mintyukov said. “So I just tried to shoot it, and scored.”
In
other words, he wasn’t trying to score, but did. And Blues coach
Jim Montgomery made the change after two goals on five shots. It was
obvious he wanted those stopped.
“Yeah,
that and just wanted to switch momentum,” Montgomery
said.
‘We had a couple games earlier in the year where I wish I would
have done more and I didn’t want to have any regrets, so I made the
switch.”
Well,
let’s just say that Binnington wasn’t happy with the hook, and he
let Montgomery know it:Jordan Binnington has some words for Jim Montgomery after getting pulled early in the 1st pic.twitter.com/CSAXoxsdNB— Gateway Grinders (@gatewaygrinders) December 2, 2025
But
I’m with the coach on this one. Binnington had been much better
going
2-0-2 his past four starts. But the team played well enough in that
first period to be down a goal.
However,
the coach said cooler heads eventually prevailed. Binnington was not
made available post game to comment.
“You
know, I love Jordan Binnington,” Montgomery said. “He’s a
competitor, he raises his games in the big moments all the time. I
love him. He walked off the ice, he said, ‘I love you.’ I said, ‘I
love you too.’ We’re both competitors by nature, and at the end of
the period, he waited for me, we apologized, we moved on. It’s over
and done with.
“It’s
the professionalism that you expect from someone like Binnington, as
well as let my own ego go and just going to him. The same thing. It’s
important that you deal with it right away. Any time you have to deal
with … I don’t love dealing with conflict. In life you deal with
conflict, and you deal with it right away. Nothing festers then.”
Montgomery
did say earlier in November when Hofer, who made 18 saves in the
shutout win Saturday, had a 3-0 shutout of the Buffalo Sabres on Nov.
6, he rewards shutouts with starting the same guy the following game.
But not this time. Hofer was solid in relief, making 19 saves, and some dandies:Joel Hofer is making save after save after save. pic.twitter.com/YnihbWwzzc— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) December 2, 2025
He
was asked if he considered it.
“We
did, but his previous was a shutout too, and we went back with him
and we didn’t win the following game,” Montgomery
said of a 4-3 overtime loss to the Seattle Kraken, one in which was
decided by a highly controversial – and in my mind, poor –
decision by officials to allow a goal with 1.9 seconds remaining in
regulation.
“That was the logic behind it. ‘Binner’ had played four great
games in a row for us.”
Let’s
just say teammates are behind their goalie.
“We’re
all competitive,” Fowler
said.
“We’re trying to win hockey games around here. Yeah, of course I
like seeing the fire out of him.”
Neighbours
added, “We
know what Binner’s about and he’s competitive. He wants to play,
he wants to compete and he wants to be with his teammates. That’s
just who he is. We see that fire in him and it kind of lights a fire
under our butts as well that we’ve got to get going and get on our
horses and play for that guy and play for ‘Hofe’ who was going
in. That competitive spirit is what we love about Binner and he’s
just being himself.”
*
Offense
remains anemic – For the eighth time in nine games, the Blues were
held to two goals or less.
The
idea was to pump, or should have been, plenty of volume on former
Blue Husso, who is No. 3 on the Ducks depth chart and was only
playing because Lukas Dostal (lower-body injury) and Petr Mrazek
(lower body) are shelved.
Husso
came in with a 4.10 goals-against average and .821 save percentage in
two games, including a relief appearance Sunday against the Chicago
Blackhawks in which he allowed a goal on the only shot he faced in a
5-3 loss.
But
the Blues generated just 22 shots, had countless other looks that
they either whiffed on, passed up scoring chances or simply missed
the net.
Dvorsky’s
open net off a 2-on-1 with Pavel Buchnevich that would have tied the
game 2-2 was in my eyes the most obvious. Philip Broberg had a chance
coming down the slot in the opening minutes of the game but missed
the net. Just too much of that of late.
But
when you have Kyrou and Buchnevich (three each) and Thomas and
Neighbours (two each) missing the net 10 of the team’s 14 times,
and the Ducks blocked 22 shots, it’s a lingering issue.
“If
I had an answer, we’d be scoring goals,” Neighbours
said.
“It’s obviously frustrating, but I think guys are trying, trying
to do the right thing, trying to get guys inside and pucks inside and
pucks to the net. I think throughout a season you’re going to have
stretches where you’re going to struggle to score, you’re going
to have stretches where you’re going to score a lot. For us, we’ve
just got to keep our noses down and keep working, keep trying to get
to that net and create.
“I
feel like there’s looks, there’s looks. Definitely we’re
getting chances. Obviously not doing a great job of finishing on them
right now and that’s something that we can improve upon as well
when we do get our looks, we’ve got to bear down and finish them.
It’s easier said than done, but that’s what needs to be done.”
There
seems to be the same lingering issues too.
“It’s
hard to point to one thing,” Fowler
said.
“All of us are trying to do the right things and I think every
single one of us would like to see a few more pucks go in, but
sometimes that’s just the nature of the NHL. It’s a really
difficult league. We have to find ways to collectively 5-on-5
generate some more offense and that starts with everybody, our ‘D’
getting activated, getting to our forecheck. We’ll continue to look
at those things, address the film, see what ways we can improve. If
we keep doing things the right way, the goals will start to go in for
us and hopefully we can start turning things around.”
Montgomery
said Monday’s issues resulted from, “I
didn’t think we were patient enough offensively. That’s a team
that plays a zone defense, they flex out and they protect the middle
of the ice, and when they’re protecting the middle of the ice like
that, if you don’t have a play, forcing it to the middle is not
going to work and unfortunately we forced too many passes to the
middle instead of going up high and pounding it from the middle and
putting it back behind the net and coming out the weak side. We went
out the weak side two or three times, we had really good looks, we
had the (No.) 6 look (Philip Broberg) early in the game and that
shift at the end of the second was the kind of things we were trying
to game plan for, but we didn’t do it often enough.
“I
think that we have a lot of gifted offensive players that haven’t
found the back of the net as often as they’re used to and sometimes
you don’t have the same poise.”Yes, the Blues are without Pius Suter (lower-body injury, day to day), Jimmy Snuggerud, who will miss the next six weeks with a left wrist injury that will require surgery on Tuesday, and Alexey Toropchenko, who is week to week with “scalding burns to his legs from a home accident,” but the opportunities to score were easily there again.
*
Fruitless
power play – The Blues’ power play had been on a decent run there
for a bit, but this homestand, went 0-for.
And
Monday’s 0-for-6 egg was part of the offensive woes.
They
had five shots and plenty of zone time but just didn’t generate
much around the net or have D-men filter pucks from distance for
tips, redirections or have a shot-like mentality.
Montgomery
said they were missing, “More
of an attack mindset, convergence at the net. We knew that they were
a team that was in shot lanes a lot, and the low plays weren’t
going to be there and we wanted a lot more shots from up top and that
didn’t transpire. We deflected a couple, but unfortunately
deflections didn’t go in. We needed more because I thought those
were our best opportunities besides the ‘Buchy’ opportunity there
at the end.”
And
it came against the 28th-ranked penalty kill.
“Just
not executing well enough to our game plan and kind of allowed them
to pressure us, we weren’t supporting close enough and giving each
other little outs that settled down the penalty kill,” Neighbours
said.
“Obviously we’ve got to converge to the net more, more shots and
having more bodies there. I thought in the third there was a little
more desperation on our couple power plays that we had there, but
you’ve go to have that desperation every single time we go over the
boards.”Even former Blues coach and current Ducks coach Joel Quenneville admitted the Ducks PK persevered due to the lack of Blues’ finish.”We
got through some kills, they had some good looks, they had some
dangerous misses,” Quenneville said.For action-packed issues, access to the entire magazine archive and a free issue, subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free. Get the latest news and trending stories by subscribing to our newsletter here. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on THN.com or creating your own post in our community forum.
