Bullet point format tonight kiddies.
- I knew that breakaway that David Perron missed was going to burn the Blues. I'm absolutely stunned that he tried to go five hole on Marty Turco after he'd just beaten him that way a couple minutes earlier. Turco may be older and slower, but he ain't dumber. He was down a little early on that one and I thought he was going high the whole way.
- That said, hopefully this is the game where Perron gets going like he was in pre-season. He was definitely flying and showing off those stick skills again tonight. You know it was eating him raw that he had zero goals and Matt D'Agostini had three. He needs to get fired up.
- Jaroslav Halak looked good again tonight, but it's beginning to be a trend that the defense is losing track of opposing forwards on the backside post for easy goals. All three tonight were scored that way (though T.J. Oshie being in the net didn't help on the second one) and at least one of Dallas' goals was scored that way. The worst part of that is that the Blues know that is a problem. By media accounts they addressed it in a video session and specifically drilled on it in a practice.
- When the Blues went up 2-0 I said to my wife that now is when we'll find out what's different. "Last year," I said, "They'd give up a goal in the next five minutes and then try to hang on to a one goal lead and lose it late." Sorry I'm so all-knowing.
- The biggest problem in the third period was when the Hawks scored the first goal. You could feel the panic in the Blues and they reacted by running around the defensive zone, flubbing breakout passes and willingly giving up puck possession by dumping the puck rather than carrying it. Davis Payne needs to see this happening and burn that timeout he has sitting in his pocket. There were five minutes left and they had a one goal lead in a game that they had controlled for a large percentage of the time. Burn the timeout, calm everyone down and get them playing their game again.
Next game is a few days away, so we all get to overthink this bad loss for a while, but the good news is that the next game is against these guys again. Let's see what adjustments they can make.