The St. Louis Blues went across the Sunshine State after having their best game of the season to having one of their worst. In a 4-1 losing affair against the Tampa Bay Lightning, this team took a major stepback right before the Christmas break.
Let’s go over the three biggest takeaways from the loss.
Lump of coal
Right before the biggest holiday of the year, the Blues were bad enough to deserve a lump of coal. This season has not been kind to this team, with ups and downs throughout the first 38 games. The Central Division is getting tougher, and every team has seemingly gotten what they want for Christmas already this season.
The Blues could have really used another sturdy win like they had against the Florida Panthers on Saturday.
Lost in 21 seconds
This matchup agaisnt the Lightning was over in the first 21 seconds of the game. That was all it took. A deflection goal from Pontus Holmgren and the Blues just never recovered.
The Blues outshot the Lightning, 24-17, and played a relatively decent game. It was not pretty, but not necessarily ugly either. They just couldn’t catch up to the early scoring, which leads us to our next takeaway.
This team cannot score goals to keep up
The Blues have not shown any kind of comeback ability this season. Letting up a flukey goal in the first shift of the game is not ideal, but there was still 59:39 left in the hockey game to try and make something happen.
Justin Faulk joined Jake Neighbours as the second member of the 10-goal club, which is astounding for two reasons. The Blues forward group is so bad that a defenseman has to be the second member, and there are some hockey teams that had three, four, five players in the double-digits for goals weeks ago.
This team has to try and develope themselves into a goal-scoring team. Relying on the defense and goaltending to grind out 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 victories is not going to cut it. It is a bit harder now than it was previous with all of the injuries to Jordan Kyrou, Dylan Holloway and Jimmy Snuggerud. But, once they inevitably come back, with plenty of time left in the season, there is no excuse for this team any longer.