ST LOUIS — If the Blues are going to make the playoffs — and that’s highly debatable at this point — they could very well open with the Colorado Avalanche.
With that in mind, it would be a nice confidence booster to get a win or two against the Avs down the stretch of the regular season. Since a season-opening 4-1 win over Colorado way back on Jan. 13, the Blues had lost four straight to the Avs entering Thursday’s contest at Enterprise Center.
The last three setbacks were by one-goal margins, all coming in the month of April.
At face value, it looked like the Avalanche were vulnerable entering the game. They were missing two of their top four goal scorers in Mikko Rantanen and Joonas Donskoi. Not to mention goalie Philipp Grubauer, who’s putting together a career year.
All three were on the NHL’s COVID-19 list. Those COVID-19 issues had cost the Avalanche nearly a week of practice, so there was the chance normally speedy Colorado would be a little rusty.
But the Blues had no such luck. The deep Avalanche didn’t miss Rantanen, who has scored 26 times this season. His replacement on the Avs’ ultra-dangerous Nathan MacKinnon line — Andre Burakovsky — filled in quite nicely Thursday, scoring twice.
The frustration mounts for the Blues who lost their third consecutive game overall and fifth straight to Colorado, 4-2.
The Blues fell to 19-19-6, staying one point behind Arizona for fourth place in the West with 44 points. They have three games in hand on the Coyotes. Colorado, which has lost only once in regulation since March 8, improved to 31-9-4.
A strong first period for the Blues was dampened by a bad turnover by Zach Sanford deep in the St. Louis zone that led to a tying goal by Colorado and a 1-1 game after the first period.
Jaden Schwartz, with only two goals since Jan. 26 — a stretch that includes 15 games missed due to injury — gave the Blues the early lead with a power play goal just 3 minutes, 18 seconds into the contest. Playing on the team’s second power-play unit, Schwartz’s fifth goal of the season came on a one-timer from the slot after Brandon Saad was sent off for holding Vince Dunn.
Stationed just to the left of the net, Tyler Bozak extended his point streak to five consecutive games by feathering a short pass to Schwartz, who did the rest. Dunn got the secondary assist, extending his career-long point streak to six games.
The Blues have perked up on the power play lately. The Schwartz goal made them 6 for 11 on power play opportunities in four-plus games.
But with the period winding down, Sanford attempted to clear the puck to the middle of the ice. (He had plenty of room to his left.) Tyson Jost came up with the takeaway, headed quickly along the boards, and then sent a beautiful centering pass to Saad open alone in front of the net. Saad beat Jordan Binnington with a backhand, tying the game with 32 seconds left in the period.
Of course, the second period has been the bane of the Blues much of this season. They entered Thursday’s game minus-17 in goal differential in the second period, the fifth-worst differential in the league in the second.
Colorado, meanwhile, was plus-32 in the second — a league best. So something had to give. And keep in mind, when the teams met at Enterprise on April 14, the Avs scored three times in the second to turn a 1-1 game after one into a 4-1 lead in a game they eventually won, 4-3.
That the Blues were outscored “only” 1-0 in the second period perhaps should be counted as a moral victory. But it still gave Colorado a 2-1 lead and meant the Blues had been outscored 6-0 in the second period over their last three games.
If you go back one game further, to the Blues’ April 10 overtime victory over the Minnesota Wild, it was seven straight goals scored by the opposing team in the second period.
In this case, the damage by Colorado came relatively early in the second period, on a power-play goal by Andre Burakovsky at the 6:45 mark of the second. It came after Justin Faulk had been sent off for tripping Jost.
Burakovksy’s 13th goal of the season came when the puck rebounded off the end boards and left Binnington out of position. As good as the Blues’ power play has been recently, their penalty kill has been lagging lately.
The Blues entered the night ranked near the bottom of the league in penalty kill efficiency — 27th at 75.7% and Burakovsky’s goal made it four consecutive games that the opponent has scored on the power play.
It could have been worse because the Blues were whistled for the first three penalties of the period, twice for delay of game, when first Colton Parayko and then Dunn sent the puck over the glass.
Offensively, the Blues continued to have trouble simply getting the puck to the net. Never mind getting it in the net. The Avalanche had 20 blocked shots through two periods Thursday, making it 85 Blues shots blocked over the last three-plus games.
Even before the third period started, that made it the highest total of Blues shots blocked over a four-game stretch this season.
Burakovsky seemingly put the lid on things when he beat Binnington for his 14th goal of the season after some sloppy play by Mike Hoffman in the St. Louis end. That made it 3-1 Colorado with 8:31 to play and seemingly put on a bow on this one.
But Schwartz made things interesting with his second goal of the night, on a shot that just dribbled through Devan Dubnyk with 6:17 left. However, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare took any suspense out with an empty-net goal with 1:31 remaining.
