Detroit came to town and stole one away from the Blues in the bonus round. More “in-depth analysis” ahead.

Game 8 of 82: Blues lose in 8th round of shootout to Detroit.

Goal: Shattenkirk (3)

Blues had a very impressive 1st period outshooting the Red Wings 13-4, with a lot of offensive zone presence and constant pressure. Shouldn’t have ended 0-0 as the Blues had a lot of great chances, but Detroit’s backup netminder, Mrazek, made some really good saves. There were a couple miscues like passes that went places where players weren’t.

One of which caused by former Blues’ winger and agitator Steve Ott. Reaves had the puck  along the boards entering the offensive zone and it appeared that Ott called for a drop pass and Reaves handed it to him. Classic troll job by Otter on that one.

The 2nd period started out to be dominate by the Blues for the most part. Shortly after the period began, Shatty made it 1-0 off a wrister from the point right off of a faceoff.

They were controlling the period like they were the first, then midway through the period, a short-handed goal due to poor post positioning by Allen allowed momentum to swing Detroit’s way. A stretch pass from Ott to Helm ended the period shorthanded for the Blues as Bortuzzo slashed Helm on a breakaway.

The Blues killed off that Bortuzzo penalty to start the 3rd and by doing so, took some momentum back from the Red Wings. The rest of the period was just boring back and forth hockey.

3 on 3 overtime was exciting as usual, but the Blues missed out on some great opportunities. Schwartz had a wide open net and shot wide left on a pass from Tarasenko. They did catch a break when they got a hooking call on a breakaway with a less than a minute left in OT. Some say it should’ve been a penalty shot, but instead the Blues just went on the penalty kill 4 on 3. They killed that off and…

…as we all know, when no one scores in overtime, the game goes into a shootout.

Steen scored somewhat easily on the very first attempt of the SO, and Allen stopped the first shot on him. So things were looking up.

Then Tarasenko misses, and Nyquist scores. Then 6 rounds of misses later. Zetterberg’s turn. We lose.¹

Quick Hits

• Blues have only scored 1 goal in 4 of their last 5.
• First shootout of the year for the Blues.²
• Lehtera was activated from the DL, and to make room for him guess who got sent down?³
• Barrett Jackman dropped the ceremonial first puck.⁴

GIF of the Game

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Eastern Conference or not, hitting a Red Wing is still a lot of fun. <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/stlblues?src=hash”>#stlblues</a> <a href=”https://t.co/WQNGEamRr9″>pic.twitter.com/WQNGEamRr9</a></p>&mdash; St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) <a href=”https://twitter.com/StLouisBlues/status/791816022063919104″>October 28, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

A big boy hit by Bortuzzo, one of the things he’s good at. Unfortunately he left the game in the 3rd period with an apparent injury.

Up Next

Blues finish up their three game homestand on Saturday against the Los Angeles Kings. Hopefully they’re not getting into the Cardinals habit of having a terrible home record for a season. They also need to score some damn goals.

Bold Prediction: Fabbri scores.

Not so Bold Prediction: Pietrangelo gets 25+ minutes of ice time. 

The Blues get back in the win column and actually score more than 1 goal in this one, winning 3-1 in regulation.

1. Boy do I miss Oshie.
2. Obviously.
3. Paajarvi!
4. That’s what they call it in hockey right?