The St. Louis Blues are staring at a narrow path, and it’s getting tighter by the day.
Sitting seventh in the Central Division, they’re now chasing the pack instead of comfortably keeping pace with it. The five-point gap separating them from the third-place Colorado Avalanche is no small hurdle, and unless the Blues catch fire soon, that deficit is going to keep looking bigger than manageable.
That urgency has only grown after a rough stretch. Entering Thursday night’s action, St.
Louis had dropped three of its previous four, though it did get a lift from Tuesday night’s win over the Detroit Red Wings. Then came Thursday’s matchup with the Utah Mammoth, another game in which the Blues battled well enough to earn a result.
It ended as a rare 0-0 deadlock, with St. Louis pulling out the shootout victory.
Even with that win in hand, the bigger picture hasn’t changed much. The Blues are running into the kind of calendar pressure that can define a season, and there’s one marker they can’t ignore.
There’s an unofficial NHL benchmark that says teams outside a playoff position by Thanksgiving usually don’t get there. The broad trend backs that up: about 75% of teams in a playoff spot by Thanksgiving end up reaching the postseason.
It’s not a hard rule, but it has become a useful snapshot of where things stand in the salary cap era. For the Blues, it means the clock is ticking.
If they can’t climb into a Wild Card spot within the next couple of weeks, their playoff odds start to look thin. That doesn’t mean the door is shut, but it does mean the margin for error is shrinking fast.
And if there’s one thing Blues fans know, it’s that this franchise has beaten the odds before. The 2019 run still stands as the reminder, the year everything looked lost before the team found its rhythm and rode it all the way to a Stanley Cup.
This time, though, nobody is expecting another miracle script. What the Blues need now is steadier, more complete hockey. The foundation is there, with Joel Hofer giving them solid goaltending and the defense not looking like a major problem.
The missing piece is the scoring. If that part starts to click, St.
Louis can still make itself a factor. Until then, the pressure keeps building.
In Other News...
Blues Win Exposed A Bigger Problem For Jim Montgomery
Philip Brobergs workload in the Blues 1-0 shootout win over Utah stood out almost as much as the result itself. He logged nearly 30 minutes of ice time, a massive share for a defenseman in a tight, low-scoring game and well ahead of the rest of St. Louis blue line, which only sharpened the conversation around how Jim Montgomery is deploying his group.
Brobergs minutes may have helped the Blues survive a night when every shift mattered, but they also pointed to a bigger issue for the coaching staff. The concern is not just what he can handle in one game, but what happens if that kind of usage becomes the norm, especially with other defensemen seeing limited time and the risk of burnout starting to creep into view. [Read more 🡒]
Blues Fans Have Every Right To Question This Roster Move
The Blues added a familiar kind of depth piece when they signed Ross Johnston to a three-year deal with a $2 million average annual value, but it is the sort of move that naturally invites a second look. Johnston brings size, a physical edge and a reputation built more on toughness than scoring, and at 32 he arrives with a limited offensive track record this season after appearing in ten games.
For a St. Louis roster that already has to be careful about how it allocates money and ice time, the fit is not immediately obvious. A player like Johnston can change the tone of a game, but the question for the Blues is whether that kind of role is worth the commitment when the bigger need is making the roster make sense from top to bottom. [Read more 🡒]
Blues Slide Puts Jordan Binnington At Center Of A Tough Decision
The Blues uneven start has put a familiar name back in the middle of the conversation, and this time it is Jordan Binnington. St. Louis sits 9-8-2 through 19 games and seventh in the Central Division, a standing that has only sharpened the scrutiny around a roster that has not found much traction yet. Binnington is in the final year of his contract, and with his performance trending down, the question is no longer just how the Blues steady themselves, but whether they keep riding with the veteran goalie or use the moment to rethink the position entirely.
There are other names circulating in the background, too, including Dalibor Dvorsky, Brandon Carlo and Pius Suter, which tells you the Blues are at least being discussed as a team that could make multiple kinds of moves if the slide continues. Nothing has been confirmed, and that is part of the tension here: St. Louis is still early enough in the season to change the story, but not so early that the front office can ignore where things stand. Binningtons future may end up being the clearest signal of how aggressively the Blues decide to respond. [Read more 🡒]