After struggling through a three-game winless swing through metropolitan New York City, the St. Louis Blues will try to reestablish their team game while hosting the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday.
The Blues were on the road for most of a three-week span. They finished that stretch by losing 5-3 to the New York Rangers on Wednesday, 2-1 to the New York Islanders on Saturday and 3-2 in overtime to the New Jersey Devils on Sunday.
“Obviously we want to get points, we need the points right now with how tight the West is.” Blues captain Ryan O’Reilly said. “But we did not play the way we needed to play. And that’s something we gotta figure out inside of our room right now.”
They return home, where they are 19-6-2, to play four of their next five games. That stretch starts against the Senators, who have lost five consecutive games.
“It’s been a long couple weeks in a row,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “Now we get home for a bit and we gotta get points.”
After battling injuries much of the season, the Blues were only missing third-pair defenseman Marco Scandella (lower body) as the road trip ended. With winger David Perron back from his one-game absence due to illness, the Blues are back at full strength at forward and capable of rolling three scoring lines.
“When you watch us play, we’re a little too individual right now,” O’Reilly said. “We’re not helping each other out enough and setting each other up, and just working for each other. We’re just very disconnected. Everyone feels it. Everyone can see it. We have to change. It’s very disappointing. We have to adjust and move on. And I’m confident we will.”
Jordan Binnington has allowed just three goals in his last three starts, providing a strong 1-2 combination in goal with Ville Husso.
The Senators are coming off a 2-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday in the third stop of a four-game road swing. Ottawa goaltender Anton Forsberg made 40 saves and the Senators outshot Vegas 16-10 in the third period.
But they came away without points after a last-minute tripping call on Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot led to Jack Eichel’s power-play goal with 5.2 seconds remaining.
“I don’t know if that’s a penalty or not, I haven’t looked at it, but that’s a tough way to lose,” Senators coach D.J. Smith said. “The way we lose tonight, we feel terrible. It hurts but at the end of the day, we know where we are at and there were a lot of good things.
“That’s the way we have to play. On the second end of a back-to-back, I didn’t dislike anyone’s game. Everyone played hard. We easily could have got a win as well.”
It was the Senators’ sixth consecutive defeat against the Golden Knights.
“For that effort, nine out of 10 times you are going to win that game,” said Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk, who scored the team’s lone goal in the second period. “That’s just the one time where it didn’t go our way.”
Ottawa goalie Matt Murray was placed on injured reserve before Sunday’s game.
–Field Level Media