The St. Louis Blues can’t afford another significant downturn if they want to stay in the Western Conference playoff hunt through the final weeks of the season.
So they will look to rebound from their 4-3 home loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday when they travel to face the Ottawa Senators on Thursday.
The Blues (36-30-3, 75 points) had won four straight before falling to the Avalanche. That defeat left St. Louis four points back of the Vegas Golden Knights for the second Western Conference wild-card slot — and the Knights have played one fewer game.
“We’ve got to move forward here,” interim Blues coach Drew Bannister said. “Take the positive out of the (Colorado) game. It wasn’t a poorly played game by any means. I thought our guys worked and we competed. We were in the game until the end. We’ve just got to clean up those mistakes, but we’ve got to build on it and get ready for Ottawa.”
The Blues fell into a 3-7-1 funk before regaining traction with their four-game winning streak. Now they hope to regain that momentum during their two-game road trip against the Senators, who are 3-8-1 in their last 12 games, and Minnesota Wild, who are also in the Western wild-card playoff chase.
“It’s how we respond from this now,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “We had a good stretch of four games. Obviously, would have been nice to come away with some points (Tuesday), but we’re playing a whole lot better.
“You can be mad about this one, but we put it behind us (Wednesday) and we go on the road here, and we’ve got to win two hockey games. That’s the reality of it, and you can’t dwell on a tough loss here. Guys played hard, guys competed, guys battled.”
One key to the St. Louis turnaround has been the play of the fourth line. Nathan Walker had a goal and assist Tuesday and Alexey Toropchenko scored his fifth goal in his last 10 games.
“Yeah, I thought we were playing pretty well,” Walker said. “We seemed to get the puck in deep and kind of do what we do. It just happened for us tonight.”
The Senators (28-35-4, 60) are coming off a 6-2 loss to the Boston Bruins on Tuesday. They pulled within a goal at 3-2 with 4 seconds left in the second period when Brady Tkachuk scored, but they buckled in the third.
“I thought that we played two good periods of hockey, especially the second period,” Ottawa coach Jacques Martin said. “Getting the goal late in the second, you’d think it would give us the momentum for the third, but it just seemed that wasn’t case. … When they got that fourth goal, it seemed to really take the life out of us.”
The Blues won their earlier meeting with the Senators 4-2 on Dec. 14. Robert Thomas had two goals and an assist and Pavel Buchnevich had a goal and an assist.
Jordan Binnington made 32 saves for the Blues and Joonas Korpisalo made 26 for Ottawa.
–Field Level Media