The St. Louis Blues are 4-1 in their last five games. During this time span, the Blues have outscored their opposition 15 to 4 and are currently on a four-game winning streak after losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins at home before their four-game road trip. There were plenty of great things that happened during this road trip. Blues rookies, Kenny Agostino and Ivan Barbashev scored their first career NHL goal. The big swede, Patrik Berglund during the five-game hot streak scored 6 goals including, getting his first hat trick of his career in a 4-2 victory against Montreal on Saturday. Berglund currently has (17) goals on the season, second on the team behind the all impressive Vladimir Tarasenko with (26) goals on the season.
Goaltending has been stellar during the last five games. Jake Allen started four out of the last five games played. During that time, Allen was 3-1 with a shutout against the Ottawa Senators stopping all 30 shots on goal. Allen has bounced back from his struggles in recent weeks. He is starting to look more focused and determined stepping into the crease, “cool, calm, and collected,” as I like to say. Carter Hutton got the start against the Philadelphia Flyers last Monday and was phenomenal stopping all 26 shots the Flyers fired at him. Hutton earned his third shutout of the season. Both, Allen and Hutton played extremely well these past road games. This is a good sign for us Blues fans going forward into the second half of the season.
Right now, I feel as if everyone is on the same page and doing everything they can to win. I see us putting more shots on goal, winning board battles, causing turnovers, and passing quick and efficient to create open lanes for whoever to shoot. We are working as a team right now and we can’t let it slide out from underneath us. This is the crucial time of the season, when the going gets tough and one or two loses in a row could hurt the Blues tremendously. The Blues need to focus on maintaining this current winning streak, building momentum for each and every game moving forward.
I wonder if the Blues recent play has anything to do with Hitchcock getting fired? In my opinion, I believe it does. The players know they must produce, firing a head coach is a big deal especially if it’s one of the all-time most winningest coaches in the NHL being fourth on the list with 733 wins. New head coach Mike Yeo has done a brilliant job with a record of 5-1 since taking over the Blues. Since being hired as head coach, Yeo has led the Blues outscoring their opponents 20 to 8. He was going to be the head coach next year anyways, there was no reason to wait if we were not succeeding or producing wins. The Blues organization needed a change, no I don’t blame hitch fully on our struggles this year but change is what we needed and it is paying off as of right now.
The Blues (29-22-5)(63 pts.) currently in third place in the central division take on the Red Wings (22-24-10) at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit on tomorrow, February 15th at 7pm. They will try and beat the Red Wing as the Predators (62 pts.) are one point behind the Blues. The Red Wings are coming off a 6-3 loss to Minnesota and are (1-3-1) in their last five. The Blues will need to take advantage on Detroit’s struggles in their past five games. They need to come out with the same mentality as the other four road games and get two big points.
