Hurricanes at Blues preview: Blown away?

Normally Groundhog Day falls in February, but right now it feels firmly planted in December. The Blues lost again last night, 4-2, to the Dallas Stars. A good portion of this is due to the loss of Jaden Schwartz, still on IR, and Jay Bouwmeester, who has been activated from the IR and who will play tonight.

It’s hard for any team to lose key players and to continue at the same pace. It’s even harder when one of those key players is your top-line winger and the other is a top pairing defenseman. I get that. It doesn’t help when the offensive firepower that could help out in this situation - Robby Fabbri - is sidelined for the entire year.

But it doesn’t excuse the Blues hopping to a 2-1 lead in the third period against Dallas and then allowing three unanswered goals, two of which were by Alexander Radulov. It doesn’t excuse whatever the hell that third period was in Edmonton last week. It certainly doesn’t excuse this team’s inability to look like they’re on the same page.

The Carolina Hurricanes have been playing well. They’re 7-1-0 in their last eight and sit in the very familiar position of barely being out of the top eight in the East. The Blues traditionally play well against Carolina, but that tradition doesn’t mean much when the team as a whole is playing frustrating hockey and is more than likely frustrated themselves with that fact.

Literally the one bright spot for this month has been the PK unit, which is second in the league for December and has allowed just three goals all month.

If the PK unit can learn to start scoring goals as well, maybe December can end with a bang. Regardless, at least it’s ending.