Every NHL team in every NHL season undergoes the painstaking process of trying to find the smallest edge on the ice that can translate to the standings.
Expanding the coaching staff? Working with skills and skating specialists? Hiring analytics departments? Employing capologists? Consulting sleep experts?
NHL teams cloak their processes in secrecy to try and protect whatever secret sauce they feel they’ve concocted. But sometimes, the sport can be a simple one: Special teams and goaltending can paper over a ton of other deficiencies.
For the Blues, that might be the best explanation for the different results so far in Drew Bannister’s 14 games (8-5-1) behind the bench compared with Craig Berube’s opening 28 games (13-14-1) this season as the St. Louis head coach.
When you look under the hood of the Blues’ two chapters this season, there’s not much of a difference to be found in the way this team plays. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Blues’ possession numbers don’t scream turnaround or point toward a tactical shift in how they play.
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Here are the team’s ranks in various possession categories at five on five under both Berube and Bannister.
- Shot attempt percentage: 27th (Berube), 29th (Bannister)
- Shot on goal percentage: 25th, 24th
- Scoring chance percentage: 25th, 27th
- High-danger chance percentage: 27th, 31st
- Expected goals percentage: 30th, 28th
If there have been gains, they have been negligible. If there have been dips, they have been hard to see. Essentially the Blues have remained the same consensus bottom-10 (sometimes bottom-five) possession team at five on five under Bannister that they were under Berube, susceptible to getting hemmed in the zone due to poor puck play or guilty of lacking a forecheck to create any offense.
The power play, though, is humming.
Since Berube was fired on Dec. 12, the Blues power play has scored 10 goals — including five in the past three games alone. It ranks eighth in the league across that span with 9.19 goals scored per hour on the advantage. It has started to score timely goals in big situations, with four game-tying goals and one go-ahead goal under Bannister.
Under Berube, the Blues power play scored neither a tying goal nor a go-ahead goal.
When the team has struggled to control the game at five on five, the Blues power play has stepped up in a way it had not during the first two months of the season.
“I felt it was building before that,†Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “Maybe the puck wasn’t going in, but now we’re getting some breaks and some bounces and getting some goals around the front of the net. It’s nice to see the power play contributing.â€
In recent games, Bannister has emphasized more of a net-front presence by putting Jake Neighbours and Oskar Sundqvist on the power play — something that Berube tried to implement, too.
“When you have success doing that, we’ll continue to go that way,†Bannister said. “Getting pucks to the net when guys are going to be there, to reward them. If they’re going to stand there, it’s not an easy place to stand. But if you want to score goals in this league, you’ve got to get around the blue paint.â€
He also shuffled the units a bit, installing Colton Parayko at the point for a bit and putting Torey Krug and Scott Perunovich on the same unit.
Jordan Binnington and Joel Hofer have been the other big difference across the past month. They have been the eighth-best duo in the league since then, and their .908 save percentage is just behind Boston, which has rostered perhaps the best tandem the past two seasons. Compare that to ranking 18th under Berube at .898.
The improved goaltending has kept the Blues in more games, which in turn allows the special teams a chance to change the game, and results in more points. The goalies have not allowed many games to get away from the Blues, which was a common theme early on in the season.
Under Berube, the Blues played about half (53.3%) of their games within one goal of their opponent — under Bannister, about three-quarters (75.7%).
The Blues and Bannister should still feel good about the results since mid-December. Points are points, no matter how they’re accumulated. The coaching staff (assistant Steve Ott and consultant Brad Richards) deserves credit for finding something that worked on the power play. And the Blues navigated a schedule in which each of the past nine opponents are currently in a playoff spot, at least by points percentage.
There are signs of progress in St. Louis. They just might not be as dramatic as the win-loss record indicates.
Alexandrov back
The Blues recalled forward Nikita Alexandrov from his conditioning loan with AHL affiliate Springfield on Tuesday morning, ending his stint in the minors with two goals and five assists in seven games.
Alexandrov bounced around the Thunderbirds lineup, lining up at all three forward positions, including one game on the top line with Matthew Peca and Adam Gaudette. Alexandrov has not played an NHL game since Dec. 8.
He would not have played another AHL game before his two-week loan ended Thursday. Alexandrov technically remained on the NHL roster throughout his conditioning loan, so the Blues did not have to conduct a corresponding transaction to create roster space.