ST. LOUIS — The Blues headed off into a 12-day All-Star break on an inauspicious note on Saturday, with a generally lethargic outing in a 4-1 loss to Winnipeg, which had come into Enterprise Center on a six-game losing streak.
The loss snapped a six-game win streak for goalie Ville Husso.
The Blues, except for Jordan Kyrou, who is headed to the All-Star Game next Saturday in Las Vegas, are off until Feb. 7 or 8, depending on when the Blues choose to resume practice. Their next game is Feb. 10 at home against New Jersey. (The two games originally on the schedule for next week, against Chicago and Montreal, were moved as part of the re-arranged NHL schedule.)
The team’s struggles were exemplified by the second period, when they managed just two shots on goal. In the third period, they had three power plays with a chance to get back in the game and couldn’t score.
"Not a lot of emotion," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "Not a lot of push. We had some opportunities. We missed the net 16 times in the game. But six Grade A chances missed the net. So you’re not going to give yourself an opportunity doing that. ... I think with the break and everything ahead after the game. I just didn’t see our team engaged enough."
"I think we were flat," said Brayden Schenn. "I don't think we had the intensity we needed to beat a good team, I think we moved our feet enough, didn’t take care of the puck enough and ultimately fell behind and weren’t able to grab it back."
The Blues pulled Husso with 3:27 to go and the Blues down 3-1. After what looked to the world like Ryan O’Reilly had been tripped, the Jets got the puck and while Neal Pionk’s length-of-the-ice shot went wide, Paul Stastny chased it down and put in the rebound off the end boards for the final goal.
The Blues scored first, on a power-play goal by Vladimir Tarasenko. It had not been a crisp power play for the Blues, as they needed almost 90 seconds to get set up in the Winnipeg end. Once they did, Justin Faulk made a quick pass to Brayden Schenn, who fired a fast cross-ice pass to Tarasenko, who settled the puck and then slammed it home for his 15th goal of the season and third on the power play.
Faulk figured prominently in Winnipeg’s tying goal in the period, though totally by accident. Jordan Kyrou had the puck in the Blues zone and instead of skating the puck up ice, turned and headed back into his own zone, where he collided with an unexpecting Faulk, who was starting to skate up ice. The puck popped away from them and toward Husso, whose attempt to clear the puck hit Winnipeg’s Stastny, who was fighting for position with Faulk and Stastny was able to knock the puck into the net just ahead of the scrambling Husso.
"We had two guys collide into each other," Berube said. "And Huss is probably wanting something different with that puck."
Husso hasn’t allowed many goals lately, but almost all of what he had allowed had been in the first period. Coming into the game, Husso had allowed seven goals in his past six starts and six of them had come in the first period.
He had been perfect in the second period over those games, stopping all 64 shots he had faced, but that run came to an end. Kyle Connor was wide on a shot from in the slot but Winnipeg retained possession, and when Connor got a second chance, he put the puck off the left post and in to put Winnipeg up 2-1 for his 24th goal of the season.
"We’re all standing around watching him," Berube said. "And he jacked it into the net. That’s basically what it boiled down to."
And then he gave up another. With Tarasenko off for high sticking, Nate Schmidt one-timed a shot from the high slot that beat Husso, who had lost his stick, to make it 3-1.
Winnipeg almost made it 4-1 but Ville Heinola’s shot went off the post, which led to a race to the puck and a possible breakaway for Klim Kostin, but by the time he got to the puck his only option was to carry it behind the net and try for a wraparound, which didn’t really pan out.
Meanwhile, Winnipeg’s Pierre-Luc Dubois was getting on the Blues’ nerves. First he got in a wrestling match with Niko Mikkola, with them both getting roughing penalties, and then he got in a shoving match with Torey Krug that resulted in no punishment.
Those two incidents matched the number of shots on goal the Blues had in the period, one by Mikkola that was at about half speed and one by David Perron on a power play.
