Three Takeaways From Blues’ 6-3 Loss Against Stars

Well, that winning streak by the St. Louis Blues ended with a rebounding thud.

It was not the perfect scenario playing their third in four games, the second of back-to-back sets and sixth game in nine days, but for the Blues, it was not meant to be after getting doubled up by the Dallas Stars, 6-3, at American Airlines Center on Sunday.

The Blues (29-27-6) had a chance to move into the second wild card in the Western Conference with a win even though the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks each have games in hand but the loss leaves them one point behind the Flames, current occupiers of the second wild card after a 2-1 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday, and Canucks, who were off.

Zack Bolduc scored his fourth goal in four games, Dylan Holloway reached the 20-goal mark in his first season with the Blues and his third goal in as many games, fourth in five, and Nathan Walker added a goal by the fourth line.

The Blues doubled up the Stars (39-19-2) in shots, 42-21, but could not get the job done to begin a six-game road trip.

Let’s look at Sunday’s Three Takeaways:

* Blues needed more from Hofer — It was pretty obvious that the Blues would turn to Joel Hofer after Jordan Binnington improved to 5-0-1 his past six starts making 25 saves on Saturday in a 4-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings.

Playing the second of a back-to-back, with travel, the Blues were going to need their tendy to make the saves and allow the team to get into a flow with some tired legs to start.

But in fact, it was the opposite. The Blues played a pretty darn good first period and probably deserved a lead.

They outshot the Stars 14-9 and had a strong territorial advantage but Hofer wasn’t good enough.

He allowed three goals on nine shots and was pulled from the game for Binnington, who finished the game.

But for a guy that’s listed at 6-foot-5, even on the TNT broadcast it was mentioned that Hofer played small.

All three goals the Stars scored (Mason Marchment, Matt Duchene and Wyatt Johnston, who had a hat trick), were scored high with Hofer making his large frame smaller than needed.

The Marchment shot was a good one picking the top corner from the right circle, but looking at the Duchene goal at 13:28 that made it 2-1, it started before the puck even got on Duchene’s stick, Hofer looked like he stumbled a bit on the initial chance but in getting back up, he seemed too casual in resetting himself and then went down giving Duchene the look over his shoulder:

And what I thought was the back-breaker goal that Johnson scored with 1.3 seconds left in the period that gave the Stars a 3-2 lead, yes, it the Blues penalty killers (see below) could have been more firm in not allowing that zone entry, but once again, from the spot which Johnston scored from, Hofer goes down too quickly and exposes the top half of the net:

The Blues had good answers and pressure when Bolduc tied it 1-1 at 3:22, or 1:26 after Marchment gave the Stars the lead:

And when Holloway tied the game 2-2 with a power-play goal of his own at 18:34, if you’re the Blues, you’d take a 2-2 game after the first period even though you played well enough to be leading it:

One of the rare games where the Blues needed a few saves when necessary and didn’t get them, and Hofer allowed a goal on the first shot he faced for the fifth time this season.

* The penalty kill was awful — The penalty kill has not been good all season, we get that. But prior to Saturday, it had made some tweaks to it and was really effective in going 8-for-8 in five games.

So not only was the unit getting the job done, but the Blues were not taking penalties either.

But after allowing a goal on LA’s only opportunity Saturday, the Blues made the Stars 19th-ranked power play look like an all-star team out there.

Dallas was 4-for-4 with the man advantage and didn’t break a sweat doing it either, scoring on five shots.

Blues coach Jim Montgomery said that Dallas is a strong rush team and the Blues can’t afford to get into an outnumbered track meet.

The Blues did a solid job of not allowing the Stars time and space to gain speed through the neutral zone and into the offensive third, but they did on that one, then giving up the cross-ice pass where Marchment scored from distance at 1:56. It came off a Radek Faksa boarding penalty 13 seconds into the game, which was the veteran’s sixth minor the past six games:

And on Johnston’s two third-period power-play goals, one at 9:14 and the other at 11:11 from a pair of Jordan Kyrou minors, the Blues were not aggressive enough in forcing the plays to be made quicker, lost wall battles and then gave up time and space. The first made it 5-3:

And another common theme was Dallas was winning the offensive zone draws, winning another one and Faksa broke his stick on the play, and Johnston scored off a rebound from the slot:

The Stars jumped up from 19th to 14th after finishing a stretch of 10-for-19 the past six games and the Blues’ penalty kill fell from 29th to 31st at 70.3 percent. Only the Detroit Red Wings are worse at 69.5 percent.

* Blues fourth line deserved more — Aside from Faksa’s minor early in the game, the fourth line was bringing the heat for the Blues in this game.

I keep saying Alexey Toropchenko will score again (he has one goal this season after scoring 14 last season, and he had a career-high nine shots on goal in this game, and combined with Faksa and Nathan Walker, who cut the Stars lead to 4-3 at 8:02 of the second period, the line combined for 14 shots on goal and each was a plus-1. The trio could have factored in more goals than just the one:

* Hear what Montgomery and Toropchenko had to say postgame: