The fourth installment of the “Grading the 2011-12 Series” features defenseman Kris Russell. Russell began the 2011-12 season skating with the Columbus Blue Jackets only to wind up with the Blues after the team sent Nikita Nikitin packing. Did Russell make a positive impact with the Blues despite limited time with the team? Read more.
The third installment of the “Grading the 2011-12 Blues” series features Matt D’Agostini. The St. Louis forward had a pretty quiet year with an injury playing a fairly major role in his 2011-12 production. Is his injury enough to offset a poor grade? Find out below. Read more.
Welcome to the new series “Grading the 2011-12 Blues” where I go through the entire St. Louis Blues roster from the year that was and grade them based on their performances in the regular season and in the playoffs. These capsules will serve as a way to measure just how well an individual player performed in 2011-12 as well as give a bit of insight of what’s to come in their career. The series starts today with Jaroslav Halak. Read more.
The St. Louis Blues are one loss away from being swept out of the playoffs by the Los Angeles Kings. The Blues looked their best of the series in Game 3 but a brutal performance from Brian Elliott combined with some foolish penalties derailed the team’s hopes of jumping back into this series. The Blues now face a daunting task of trying to come back from a three games to zero hole – a feat that has only occurred three times in NHL history. Read more.
Typically these game recaps run between 500 and 1,000 words. Tonight we need just one word to summarize – Dreadful. We’ve seen the Blues look sluggish out of the gate. We’ve seen them make some mental errors and look like a shy, timid team at times during the regular season. Then there’s whatever that was in tonight’s first period. The Blues were dominated in the first period. Dominated with a capital “D”. Use any cliche you like, it applies to the Blues in the first period. This first period debacle puts the Blues in one big hole as the series shifts to Los Angeles. Read more.
First, let’s make one point very clear. This was one game. If you recall the Blues also dropped Game 1 against the San Jose Sharks before ultimately winning the series four games to one. That being said this was a discouraging and disappointing loss that can be best described by the word in the title – lackadaisical. Fans may be quick to blame the officiating, which again was subpar, but this loss falls squarely on the shoulders of our favorite team that came out of the gate flying only to retreat to a sloppy, uninspired approach. Read more.
The Blues turned in an extremely impressive defensive effort in a 2-1 win against the San Jose Sharks in Game 4, giving the Blues a huge 3-1 lead in the series. Brian Elliott was once again outstanding in net making numerous saves that kept the Blues in what was an extremely tight game that could have shifted in favor of the Sharks if Elliott wasn’t on hand. The Blues didn’t see many chances offensively but were able to convert on two opportunities which ended up being the difference thanks to Elliott’s play in net. Read more.
The St. Louis Blues tallied three power play goals to give the club a 4-3 victory in Game 3. Converting three out of four possible chances with the man advantage, the Blues now hold a 2-1 edge in the series and have made a huge statement by defusing the animosity San Jose had following the fireworks after Game 2. Read more.
