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3 takeaways from Blues 6-2 loss to Coyotes
The St. Louis Blues fell flat at home to the tune of a 6-2 loss to the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday.
St. Louis defenseman Justin Faulk was brutally honest in his assessment of the Blues' performance, calling it "sloppy", "lazy" and "ugly hockey".
Here are three takeaways from St. Louis' first home loss of the season at the Enterprise Center:
No points for you
In the National Hockey League, if you're going to lose a game, get to overtime first. A game that goes to overtime awards both teams with a point in the standings. The Blues lost the season opener to Dallas after a shootout and defeated Seattle to enter Thursday's game with three points. The 6-2 catastrophe against the Coyotes left the Blues empty-handed.
“It’s hard to execute offensively when you don’t have the puck,” Blues head coach Craig Berube said. “We had the puck for moments but not long enough to do anything. When we did have it, we didn’t make any plays. We didn’t execute anything.”
A tale of two goalies
Joel Hofer made his first start of the season and the Coyotes saw easy prey. The Arizona attack overwhelmed the young backup goalie with 42 shots on goal. Hofer stopped 36 shots but let three goals in during the second period and two more in the third period.
“They got pucks on the outside and on the flanks, and we didn't push hard enough to get them out, keep them to the outside," Faulk said. So then they made plays in the middle because they had time. It's just us being more aggressive and making them earn everything.”
On the other side of the ice, Coyotes goalie Connor Ingram only had to hold off 26 shots from St. Louis, allowing only two goals, scored by Jakub Vrána and Sammy Blais.
“I didn’t have to do much today other than kill that penalty at the end of the second period,” Ingram said. “Other than that, I didn’t have too much. My job was pretty easy.”
A big reason behind the imbalance of workload between the pipes was the power play discrepancy. The Coyotes had double the power plays (4-2), which led to three goals, and won eight more faceoffs than the Blues.
Missouri native shines in St. Louis
Missouri native Clayton Keller scored a goal and assisted in another during his 13th trip to St. Louis.
Keller, who was born in Chesterfield, Mo., has been Arizona’s leading goal scorer for the past two seasons and the 2020 postseason. He has 26 points in 25 career games against his hometown Blues.
Keller said during practice before Thursday's game that he still remembers fondly the many memories of going to Blues games as a fan with his grandfather. He went from watching Blues great Keith Tkachuk to being coached by him with the St. Louis AAA Blues to then being youth teammates with his son, Florida Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk. He, Tkachuk, and three other St. Louis area players were selected in the first round of the 2016 NHL Draft, and to bring Keller's fairytale full circle, he made his NHL debut in St. Louis with the Coyotes on March 27, 2017.
"It seems like a long time ago now," Keller said. "Coming right from college and getting lucky enough to have the Blues on the calendar there for my first game in my hometown is pretty special and something I'll never forget. All the people that supported me and put in a lot of effort and sacrifice to get me to that stage was unbelievable, and it's just nice to have them all there."