Jim Montgomery has a balancing act on his hands, and the Blues’ latest game made it hard to ignore.
St. Louis edged Utah in a 1-0 shootout, needing eight rounds before Connor McMichael finished it off in a hard-fought win over a solid Mammoth team. But the result came with one clear takeaway: the Blues leaned heavily on their defense, and one player carried far more of the load than anyone else.
Of the six defensemen, only one logged more than 20 minutes, and that included the extra five minutes of overtime. That was Philip Broberg, who was on the ice for a massive 29:48. For Montgomery, that can’t be the long-term answer.
Broberg is clearly the top option on the blue line, and that’s exactly why the workload matters. If he wears down or gets hurt, that’s the worst-case scenario for this team. At the same time, the rest of the defense isn’t getting enough opportunity to actually influence games, whether that’s a prospect or a veteran trying to carve out a role.
Even in a league where heavy minutes for top defensemen are nothing new, Broberg’s situation feels different because there isn’t much of a safety net behind him. Quinn Hughes gets a ton of minutes in Minnesota, as does Evan Bouchard in Edmonton, and Matthew Schaefer out on Long Island. But the Blues don’t appear to have the same kind of fallback if Broberg is pushed too hard.
He has to be an everygame player, but cannot be a player that approaches 27 minutes a night.
That issue spills into the bigger picture, too. Adam Jiricek has been pushed to the sidelines since Logan Maillouc returned, with the Blues deciding that Justin Barron was the better right-handed left-side defenseman. That may be the right call in the moment, but it raises another question: what happens to Jiricek’s development now?
Barron has played very well, but he’s also not getting much of a chance to leave a bigger imprint because Broberg is soaking up so much of the ice time. Montgomery needs to be more careful about spreading that workload around. The unit has to grow together, not drift apart.
Broberg should still be the lead defenseman. But getting him closer to 23 minutes would make more sense. Otherwise, the Blues risk burning him out and forcing a major shakeup on the back end anyway.
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Consistency has been the missing ingredient, and so has a steadier attack. St. Louis knows it needs better scoring to turn close games into points and keep its playoff hopes from slipping into a chase it can no longer control. The next stretch will say plenty about whether this group can build on the Utah result or whether it remains stuck trying to catch up. [Read more 🡒]