The St. Louis Blues will have to reestablish their home-ice advantage to stay in the Western Conference playoff race.
They bring an 8-9-1 home record into their game against the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday night. This game starts a stretch of 13 of 17 games on their ice for the Blues, who have just four more road games on their schedule until Feb. 27.
“We had a very difficult schedule, road-to-home-wise, and we’re going to be able to make some of that ground up in January,” Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said. “We have to make Missouri a very unpleasant trip for our opposition. We haven’t been able to do that enough recently. We have to make Enterprise Center a very difficult place to play.”
The Blues are coming off 6-4 losses at Columbus and Minnesota. In the latter game, they took a 4-2 lead over the Wild but failed to maintain control, giving up three goals in the third period.
While Armstrong has been generally pleased with his team’s five-on-five play since Jim Montgomery replaced Drew Bannister as coach, special teams play has remained problematic.
The Blues are converting just 18.1 percent of their power plays, which ranked 25th in the NHL through Tuesday’s games. They are killing 73.3 percent of their penalties, which ranked 27th.
“That’s the last step, us being able to get more power plays by drawing them, going to the harder areas,” Montgomery said. “I think we’re starting to do that offensively, so the power play should come. And then the penalty kill, along with the power play, becoming a 105 percent combined percentage. We think that’s the last step here being able to become a real consistent product.”
The Ducks have earned points in five of their last six games while going 4-1-1. They earned an overtime point Tuesday in a 3-2 home loss to the Calgary Flames.
“I love the fact that every game we play in, we’re in,” winger Alex Killorn said. “There haven’t been many games where we’re in a third period, we’re looking up and looking at a score that we can’t come back from. A lot of times, we’re right in the mix.”
Like the Blues, the Ducks are looking for special teams improvement. They had converted just 2 of 35 power plays before Mason McTavish scored with the man advantage against Calgary.
“It’s such a big part of the game, and obviously it hasn’t been great to start the year,” McTavish said. “It’s something we’re working on a lot. Nice to get a couple in the last couple of games.”
The Ducks played without winger Troy Terry as he awaited the birth of his second child. Terry, who leads the Ducks with 33 points (14 goals, 19 assists) earned the NHL’s Second Star honor after scoring four goals and notching two assists in four games last week.
Blues defenseman Cam Fowler will get a reunion with his former teammates Thursday. Fowler posted 457 points (96 goals, 361 assists) in 991 games for Anaheim over 15 seasons before he was dealt to St. Louis earlier this season.
Fowler has nine points (four goals, five assists) in 12 games since the trade.
–Field Level Media
