St. Louis Blues At Edmonton Oilers Final Score: Blues Score Powerplay Goal, Still Lose 4-2

Despite rectifying – for one powerplay – the goal scoring drought, the Blues fell to the Edmonton Oilers 4-2 tonight. This loss leaves them one game under .500 overall, and concludes the road trip at 2-2. What started off with some gumption de-evolved into sloppy play, an apparent lack of interest, and a failure to communicate. Heck, it took three Blues crashing the net (and almost winding up in the net) to score the powerplay goal that was inexplicably credited to Chris Stewart the Birthday Boy.

There’s nothing to be said about this game that I haven’t said before: communicate, fix the special teams, and play with some consistency. Tonight you could factor in winning some face-offs as well. Halak looked better, especially in the third period where he returned to something resembling his form The defense in front of him didn’t give him much of a hand though, giving Edmonton’s kids way, way too many chances.

The Blues don’t play again until Friday night, when the Vancouver Canucks visit. That gives them four days to work, practice, and try to fix these problems. Granted, they’ve had almost a month to do so, but maybe four uninterrupted days’ work will help.

St. Louis Blues At Edmonton Oilers Second Period Score: Backes Scores, Blues Down 4-1

No words can describe this period, but I’ll try: fix your penalty kill and get Halak moving and aware. That seems to summarize the issues pretty ok.

Despite the fact that David Backes scored his third goal of the year to start the period off, no momentum even looked like it was going the Blues’ way – or at the very least no one was willing to follow their captain’s lead. The team still isn’t communicating well, and is having issues maintaining puck possession against the speedy youngsters of the Oilers.

Ryan Smyth netted two goals ten minutes apart, the first sliding under Jaroslav Halak’s pad on some sloppy lateral movement from the goalie. Between those two, Jordan Eberle deflected a shot off of his skate sans kicking motion squeaked between Halak’s legs.

Poor possession, bad decisions, and terribly sloppy play by the Blues have put the Oilers up 4-1, and chances are it has also put this game out of reach.

St. Louis Blues At Edmonton Oilers First Period Score: Special Teams Problems Prove Costly Again

The Blues’ penalty kill and power play look neutered as usual tonight so far. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been – the penalty kill only allowed one goal on three Oilers powerplays – but you could still see the struggles happening with a severe lack of communication on Shane Horcroff’s goal – no coverage left Halak’s right side completely exposed and gaping for Horcoff to fire it home.

The frustrating thing is that the penalties that are causing the Blues to be shorthanded are caused by mistakes made out of frustration – all completely avoidable, and SHOULD be avoided considering the penalty kill’s lack of prowess. Matt D’Agostini’s slashing call that led to the goal, Roman Polak’s holding call, and especially T.J. Oshie’s boarding hit on Eric Belanger were all penalties of frustration. Frustration’s understandable in the situation the Blues are in – they’re working to fix a problem and nothing seems to work. But when you’re trying to fix something that goes wrong, a good way to do so is to not have that thing go wrong.

Halak has stopped four of five shots so far, with absolutely no chance to stop the one goal allowed. All eyes are on him – he has had 18 days of rest, and it is assumed that there’s some rust on the hinges there.

St. Louis Blues At Edmonton Oilers: Blues Need To Finish Road Trip On Strong Note

All in all, the Blues’ four game road trip has been a success thus far, with wins over Philadelphia and Vancouver. Friday’s loss to the Calgary Flames can be seen as just a hiccup on the path of improved goaltending. It was, however, another paving stone on the path of power-play terribleness. The Blues PP is still dead last in the league, and Jeremy Rutherford ties that – along with the Blues’ loss – to the fact that the top two lines haven’t been able to score. Obviously, those guys make up the powerplay unit, and considering the fact that they’ve only combined for 22 points so far this season it’s pretty easy to draw the correlation between the two. David Backes has but four points, and Chris Stewart has two.

The Oilers are 12th in the league on the power play, and the fourth overall penalty kill unit. This’ll pose more problems for the Blues, who will have to go after one of the best tandems in the league with Nikolai Khabibulin (4-0-2, 0.97 goals-against average) and Devan Dubnyk (2-2-0, 1.98 GAA). While the Blues’ recent main goaltender Brian Elliott lost his first game on Friday, chances are good that Jaroslav Halak might find himself back in the crease lest he get rusty. Or, as some might see it, rustier. Halak hasn’t played since October 18th, and has a 3.47 GAA and a .835 SV% while losing four out of five starts.

Honestly, if the forwards don’t step up and Halak isn’t back to form tonight, the Oilers stand a great chance of stringing together five wins in a row for the first time in two years. Edmonton fans are getting a heck of a treat this Halloween. It’s a shame the Blues haven’t gotten the mem that they can lay off of the tricking. They need to become the team that the have the ability to be, or else this is going to be a long season.