NO ONE saw this coming…

NO ONE saw this coming…

No one saw this coming. It’s heading into the season with huge expectations on both goalenders. The St. Louis Blues have a serious problem as Jim Montgomery needs to figure out not only his goalending situation, but what is happening on defense and Ford. Plus, we get a huge update from Jim Montgomery on Robert Thomas. We’re going to break down everything that is happening in St. Louis with two goalenders struggling and so much more in this episode. and you’re not going to want to miss it. Before we get into it, I just want to give a huge shout out to everyone watching. We’re trying to reach our goal of 5,000 subscribers. So, if you haven’t hit the sub button yet and you want to stay up to date on everything to do around the St. Louis Blues, go down and hit that free subscribe button. We’re going to set our goal to 5,000 subscribers by next Wednesday. So, make sure to hit it and help us reach our goal because we’re going to keep you up to date with daily content. But with that, let’s just dive straight into the Jim Montgomery update on Robert Thomas. Now, we know the Ford is on a day-to-day basis. We’ve seen that with Jake Neighbors as well, though he was deemed out weekto week for five weeks, but we do see Jim Montgomery say that Robert Thomas is doing better according to him. Montgomery said he’s taken the steps to be a player again, but doubtful for tomorrow’s game. Now, when first reading this, I thought it was saying that Jim Montgomery was trying to be a player again, but Darius, what is your thoughts on this update with Robert Thomas as the team is playing without their top forward? Yeah, reading that tweet at first you’re like, is Jim Montgomery going to be the new firstline center for the St. Louis Blues? But not the case. Obviously, he’s saying that Robert Thomas is progressing well, which is good news because at the time last week when he went out with the injury, the language that was being used, you thought that maybe this could be a long-term injury. You’re hoping obviously like we’ve been talking about all week that it wouldn’t be and that he would be back in the lineup soon, but you know, the language that was used, you know, was kind of vague. So, I think that they’re definitely in a good spot right now in terms of, you know, him coming back soon. It sounds like obviously he’s not going to be available for their next game, but uh I think that, you know, as long as he’s back soon, they’ll be in good shape. And I think that there’s a lot of teams around the league, and Jim Montgomery has spoke out about this that are struggling right now and then will find their footing. I mean, Pittsburgh’s in a playoff spot right now. I don’t know if it’s going to stay that way. We’ll see. They’re off to a hot start. But even last year, the same thing, right? There’s just a lot of teams right now that have not found their footing, that have really big expectations and aspirations to be really good. And I feel like the Blues will end up finding their mojo, whatever you want to call it, uh, in the future. And I think Robert Thomas is going to be a big part of that. He’s going to be the catalyst. He has to carry uh, a ton of the weight, right? He’s going to be carrying the team on his back at times as that first line center with those defensive responsibilities and having to put up, you know, 90 points or so as we’ve been projecting. So, it’s going to be tough. Hopefully, he’s back soon. This is a pretty good update. The fact that he’s going to be back, you know, skating soon instead of, you know, I always hate it when the language is we will re-evaluate him in this X time period or whatever, right? Because that means he’s still out for a bit. So, the fact that he’s going to be skating, he should be back soon, I think that’s good news from Montgomery. And I think the biggest thing is looking around this team, we know D’Vorski is coming up and we’re getting them set between Kyu and Joseph coming in a speedy winger and a goal scorer in Kyu as well. So without Robert Thomas, they get to have a look at one of their young prospects coming up early in the season as they try to get back into the win column. But the biggest thing with the St. Louis Blues team, listen, a lot of fingers can be pointed everywhere. You can say Logan Mayu deserves to be in the AHL, which I do disagree with. This is a team that is struggling and the losses aren’t purely on him, though a lot of games do look quite bad. But I think the biggest question around the St. Louis Blues series is the fact the goalending has not been what this team is expecting going in. We even spoke about the media fans spoke about how good this goalending duo was going in one of the best in the NHL and we can see Jordan Bennington through eight games a two and four record with an 863 save percentage. Joel Hoffer 793. What is your thoughts on the struggles with this Blues team? Listen, we’re going to get into some event stats and what is happening, but just overall looking at this, what is your initial thoughts on a Blues team that is going in with goalenders that are struggling? There’s still a lot of teams around the league that go with their traditional starter and backup, but there is a lot of teams now that are going with the tandem setup, right? A lot more teams are going that route. And when you look at last season, right after the season ended, maybe in June, there were so many articles and reports about how good this tandem was together and that the Blues have something special heading into next year. Then you saw the same reports and lists articles. We covered it on the channel during the summer, heading into the summer that watch out for the Blues, they have one of the best tandemss in the league. We’ll see how it plays out in terms of, you know, specifics with the numbers. Maybe there’s some better tandemss in terms of numbers out there like the Toronto Maple Leafs had last season, but this is a tandem coming into this season that everyone was like, “This is going to be great. If one goalender falters a little bit, you can lean on the other one.” They have a great setup here. And what was important is to manage Jordan Bennington’s workload heading into the Olympics this year as well to not let him play as much cuz he’s going to be playing in the Olympics, which is a lot longer than the four nations faceoff, which he looked great in last year. And then the hopes is that he could be that guy for them again in the playoffs. Well, let me tell you, none of that has gone to plan. Not even one piece of that has gone to plan. It has been horrible. Their numbers are horrendous. Hoffers especially just mental lapses in their game, too. Like this clip you can see. I mean, that was a tape to tape pizza. Like, I have no idea what he was doing there, but it hasn’t been good. I think they’ll get it together. And a big thing for me is confidence. This team has zero confidence right now from their goalending, which I do believe personally. Everything goes through your goalenders. If your goalender is playing with confidence, he’s making big saves, it’s going to radiate throughout the entire team. Everything goes through your goalenders, right? So, uh I it has to start with them. They have zero confidence right now. The rest of the team has zero confidence, right? And it’s been a big thing for me uh personally when watching different teams. Logan Mayu, same thing. If you’re sewing his confidence, like he’s not going to be able to figure it out, right? So, I’m not blaming all the losses on one guy or two guys in particular or three guys, right? But it’s affecting the whole team and I do believe that everything goes through your goalenders and even the other night, right? You’re looking to get back on track. You’re like, “Okay, Pittsburgh, this is a good opportunity and you’re down two nothing within the first minute, right? Like you cannot start a game like that. It is so demoralizing.” So, they have to get back on track. I think that they are able to do it. You you don’t forget how to play hockey. I think it’s just a mental shift that they have to make heading into November and they will be okay. Right. Blues teams in the past have been in worse situations. So, uh I think that they will be okay. Uh it’s early in the season, but everything goes to your goalender. Uh they haven’t been good and there’s no confidence throughout the entire team for it. And I think that’s the biggest issue. Listen, the St. Louis Blues team on paper should be a very good team. Listen, they don’t have Robert Thomas and Jake Neighbors in the lineup right now. But when you inject these guys, you take a team that pushed a presence trophy winner into doubleot in game seven. You’re looking at a team that went out and just added a 25 goal scorer in Pew Suitter bringing in a former 40point getter in Buches. This is a team that should be better. But the big thing is the mental laps, the team not performing, looking slower than the opponents and the goalender struggling. You’re getting the worst of all three at the exact same time. The Blues need to set the tone right now. One of the goalenders need to come out. Bennington has to go out have a big game prove that they’re good because I mean looking at the events numbers Darius right now goal saved above expected the worst in the league is Lionus Mark at -7.8 eight. You work your way down. Number four, Joel Hoer. And number seven, Jordan Bennington. These are numbers that are almost unacceptable. You need to make these big saves. We know they can do it. Especially Jordan Bennington looking at last year in the latter half of the season. We seen how big he was for Canada going into the tournament. We’ve seen how big he was in the playoffs. What is your thoughts on this? And do you think they can get back to this form? Or is this going to be a situation where Doug Armstrong might have to look at maybe a third veteran goalender to come in just to give these guys a bit of a break? Well, how ironic is it that Colton Ellis, we did a video about him being claimed off waiverss and we’re like, hopefully it didn’t get to this point, but that’s the reality of it. We’re like, you know, hopefully it doesn’t hurt them too much. Obviously, you know, you’d like him to come in and be a goalender of the future for this team, but man, could you use him right now, right? So, that’s tough. But when you look at that, if you can bring up those analytics again, I mean, this is the entire league and two of your goalenders are there in the top seven. This is not good. This is not a good situation, especially because sometimes you might see a goalender on here that’s a backup for another team that’s maybe played one or two games like a Kaden Primo, for example, from Toronto. But there’s a substantial uh, you know, sample size here for both goalenders. They both got into multiple games at this point for the Blues. So, this is not where you want to be. This is bad company. And I didn’t even realize Omar’s been that bad in Ottawa as well this season. But, uh, they have to get back on track. I like your point about setting the tone. Bennington has to take the net here, I think, cuz he’s getting it next game. Uh, Montgomery has come out and said that that it’s looking like it’s going to be Bennington versus Lincolnin in their next game. So, he has to take control here. He has to have a big game and then you can kind of, you know, try to build something off of that, build some momentum. And Hoffer can probably feel good going to the net because the stress and all this anxiety that’s built up around the team might ease a little bit if you have a good performance. So, he needs that. And what a better game to do it. uh or no better game to do it against the Vancouver Conucks that are, you know, injury riddled, right? It’s going to be tough. They didn’t even score a goal against the New York Rangers either. So, it’s going to be interesting to see what they’re going to be able to do against them. But go down and leave a comment on all your thoughts on this. What is your thoughts on the goalending? What do you think the biggest weakness is on this team? Do they need to go out and get a veteran defenseman to kind of set the tone like a suit we seen last year? Do they need a backup or a third string goalender? Let us know all your thoughts down in the comments. And speaking on comments, let’s go straight into comments of the day coming from Jude saying, “Keep up the good work, Mark, Dominguez, and Darius.” But I want to give a huge shout out cuz we know you made it right to the end of the video cuz we made that little joke at the end. So, I just want to give a huge shout out and go down and leave a comment on all your thoughts down below. Go down and leave a comment saying the Habs suck cuz listen, Logan is going to bounce back and have a huge season once this team gets going. Leave your thoughts and everything down below and you can be featured on comments of the day. While you’re down there, leave a like, subscribe, share this with your friends. will be back another episode. So keep an eye out for that. But I’ve been your host Mark with my co-host series.

The St. Louis Blues have a serious problem as Jordan Binnington and Joel Hofer continue to struggle, while Jim Montgomery giving a update on Robert Thomas. Mark Pye and Darius Domingues break down all this and more on this episode of Canucks Digest.

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Blues Digest is a YouTube channel dedicated to covering all the latest news, trades, reports, and rumors about the St. Louis Blues. We provide in-depth coverage of game highlights, player performances, and analysis of team strategies. Our channel features discussions on key players like Robert Thomas, Jordan Kyrou, Pavel Buchnevich, and Jordan Binnington, along with insights from Head Coach Jim Montgomery and General Manager Doug Armstrong. Stay tuned for all the exciting updates and engaging content on everything Blues!

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