Lou KoracTue, December 2, 2025 at 6:35 AM UTC·12 min readST. LOUIS – So many times we’ve seen the St. Louis Blues start to climb that mountain, only to either stumble or fall back down.
It wasn’t a fall-back-down moment for them on Monday against the Anaheim Ducks, but it surely was a stumble.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Blues’ anemic offense was on display once again, and Jordan Binnington was pulled after allowing two goals on five shots, and some heat was exchanged between he and coach Jim Montgomery. It all culminated in a 4-1 loss to the Ducks at Enterprise Center, thwarting the Blues’ chance of their first three-game winning streak of the season.
Jordan Kyrou scored, but former Blue Ville Husso stopped 21 shots for the Ducks (16-9-1), while the Blues fell back to two games under .500 (9-11-7) with the chance to get back to that number heading on a three-game road trip.
“We’re scratching and clawing right now to try and find wins,” Blues defenseman Cam Fowler said. “So it’s disappointing. I’m not going to make too much more out of it than that.”
Let’s look at Monday’s observations:
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement* Two early goals, a goalie hook – It’s no secret that Binnington and Joel Hofer had turned their respective games around. Goaltending for the Blues has not been an issue relatively speaking for the past month, dating back to the 6-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Nov. 5.
Joel Hofer was coming off a grinding 1-0 shutout of the Utah Mammoth on Saturday.
Things seemed to be turning around, with the chance at going 3-for-3 on home ice.
But the two goals that the Ducks scored in the first period, one by Mason McTavish and one by Pavel Mintuykov, were deflating goals.
The one by McTavish at 6:33 of the first period, there’s plenty of debate on what happened and if it should have been saved – I believe it should have – that gave the Ducks a 1-0 lead.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFirst of all, Dalibor Dvorsky has to be stronger on that puck to get it out of the zone, instead of just pushing it to the blue line, only to be kept in. Once it got thrown to the net, Binnington blockered it to the left side boards where McTavish whipped it right back at the net and beat Binnington short side. Yes, the puck caromed off Fowler but really no change of direction and from distance. Logan Mailloux was skating through the vision but appeared to be off the eyes of Binnington long enough that if he just covers the short side, it hits him and the game stays scoreless:
Kyrou got the equalizer 20 seconds later on a solid forecheck by Jake Neighbours, an even better dangle and backhand pass by Robert Thomas to the backside post and finish to make it 1-1:
But again, after a Blues power play had expired, Mintyukov took a chipped puck into the Blues’ zone and the right circle. Justin Faulk defended him well, kept him to the outer edge of the right circle. He was at the end of a shift and just basically wanted to put a puck on net and get off, but did one better:
“I was alone; I’m not going to try and take (the) ‘D’ 1-on-1,” Mintyukov said. “So I just tried to shoot it, and scored.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIn other words, he wasn’t trying to score, but did. And Blues coach Jim Montgomery made the change after two goals on five shots. It was obvious he wanted those stopped.
“Yeah, that and just wanted to switch momentum,” Montgomery said. ‘We had a couple games earlier in the year where I wish I would have done more and I didn’t want to have any regrets, so I made the switch.”
Well, let’s just say that Binnington wasn’t happy with the hook, and he let Montgomery know it:
But I’m with the coach on this one. Binnington had been much better going 2-0-2 his past four starts. But the team played well enough in that first period to be down a goal.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHowever, the coach said cooler heads eventually prevailed. Binnington was not made available post game to comment.
“You know, I love Jordan Binnington,” Montgomery said. “He's a competitor, he raises his games in the big moments all the time. I love him. He walked off the ice, he said, 'I love you.' I said, 'I love you too.' We're both competitors by nature, and at the end of the period, he waited for me, we apologized, we moved on. It's over and done with.
“It’s the professionalism that you expect from someone like Binnington, as well as let my own ego go and just going to him. The same thing. It’s important that you deal with it right away. Any time you have to deal with … I don’t love dealing with conflict. In life you deal with conflict, and you deal with it right away. Nothing festers then.”
Montgomery did say earlier in November when Hofer, who made 18 saves in the shutout win Saturday, had a 3-0 shutout of the Buffalo Sabres on Nov. 6, he rewards shutouts with starting the same guy the following game. But not this time.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHofer was solid in relief, making 19 saves, and some dandies:
He was asked if he considered it.
“We did, but his previous was a shutout too, and we went back with him and we didn’t win the following game,” Montgomery said of a 4-3 overtime loss to the Seattle Kraken, one in which was decided by a highly controversial – and in my mind, poor – decision by officials to allow a goal with 1.9 seconds remaining in regulation. “That was the logic behind it. ‘Binner’ had played four great games in a row for us.”
Let’s just say teammates are behind their goalie.
“We’re all competitive,” Fowler said. “We’re trying to win hockey games around here. Yeah, of course I like seeing the fire out of him.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNeighbours added, “We know what Binner’s about and he’s competitive. He wants to play, he wants to compete and he wants to be with his teammates. That’s just who he is. We see that fire in him and it kind of lights a fire under our butts as well that we’ve got to get going and get on our horses and play for that guy and play for ‘Hofe’ who was going in. That competitive spirit is what we love about Binner and he’s just being himself.”
* Offense remains anemic – For the eighth time in nine games, the Blues were held to two goals or less.
The idea was to pump, or should have been, plenty of volume on former Blue Husso, who is No. 3 on the Ducks depth chart and was only playing because Lukas Dostal (lower-body injury) and Petr Mrazek (lower body) are shelved.
Husso came in with a 4.10 goals-against average and .821 save percentage in two games, including a relief appearance Sunday against the Chicago Blackhawks in which he allowed a goal on the only shot he faced in a 5-3 loss.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut the Blues generated just 22 shots, had countless other looks that they either whiffed on, passed up scoring chances or simply missed the net.
Dvorsky’s open net off a 2-on-1 with Pavel Buchnevich that would have tied the game 2-2 was in my eyes the most obvious. Philip Broberg had a chance coming down the slot in the opening minutes of the game but missed the net. Just too much of that of late.
But when you have Kyrou and Buchnevich (three each) and Thomas and Neighbours (two each) missing the net 10 of the team’s 14 times, and the Ducks blocked 22 shots, it’s a lingering issue.
“If I had an answer, we’d be scoring goals,” Neighbours said. “It’s obviously frustrating, but I think guys are trying, trying to do the right thing, trying to get guys inside and pucks inside and pucks to the net. I think throughout a season you’re going to have stretches where you’re going to struggle to score, you’re going to have stretches where you’re going to score a lot. For us, we’ve just got to keep our noses down and keep working, keep trying to get to that net and create.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I feel like there’s looks, there’s looks. Definitely we’re getting chances. Obviously not doing a great job of finishing on them right now and that’s something that we can improve upon as well when we do get our looks, we’ve got to bear down and finish them. It’s easier said than done, but that’s what needs to be done.”
There seems to be the same lingering issues too.
“It’s hard to point to one thing,” Fowler said. “All of us are trying to do the right things and I think every single one of us would like to see a few more pucks go in, but sometimes that’s just the nature of the NHL. It’s a really difficult league. We have to find ways to collectively 5-on-5 generate some more offense and that starts with everybody, our ‘D’ getting activated, getting to our forecheck. We’ll continue to look at those things, address the film, see what ways we can improve. If we keep doing things the right way, the goals will start to go in for us and hopefully we can start turning things around.”
Montgomery said Monday’s issues resulted from, “I didn’t think we were patient enough offensively. That’s a team that plays a zone defense, they flex out and they protect the middle of the ice, and when they’re protecting the middle of the ice like that, if you don’t have a play, forcing it to the middle is not going to work and unfortunately we forced too many passes to the middle instead of going up high and pounding it from the middle and putting it back behind the net and coming out the weak side. We went out the weak side two or three times, we had really good looks, we had the (No.) 6 look (Philip Broberg) early in the game and that shift at the end of the second was the kind of things we were trying to game plan for, but we didn’t do it often enough.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I think that we have a lot of gifted offensive players that haven’t found the back of the net as often as they’re used to and sometimes you don’t have the same poise.”
Yes, the Blues are without Pius Suter (lower-body injury, day to day), Jimmy Snuggerud, who will miss the next six weeks with a left wrist injury that will require surgery on Tuesday, and Alexey Toropchenko, who is week to week with "scalding burns to his legs from a home accident," but the opportunities to score were easily there again.
* Fruitless power play – The Blues’ power play had been on a decent run there for a bit, but this homestand, went 0-for.
And Monday’s 0-for-6 egg was part of the offensive woes.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThey had five shots and plenty of zone time but just didn’t generate much around the net or have D-men filter pucks from distance for tips, redirections or have a shot-like mentality.
Montgomery said they were missing, “More of an attack mindset, convergence at the net. We knew that they were a team that was in shot lanes a lot, and the low plays weren’t going to be there and we wanted a lot more shots from up top and that didn’t transpire. We deflected a couple, but unfortunately deflections didn’t go in. We needed more because I thought those were our best opportunities besides the ‘Buchy’ opportunity there at the end.”
And it came against the 28th-ranked penalty kill.
“Just not executing well enough to our game plan and kind of allowed them to pressure us, we weren’t supporting close enough and giving each other little outs that settled down the penalty kill,” Neighbours said. “Obviously we’ve got to converge to the net more, more shots and having more bodies there. I thought in the third there was a little more desperation on our couple power plays that we had there, but you’ve go to have that desperation every single time we go over the boards.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementEven former Blues coach and current Ducks coach Joel Quenneville admitted the Ducks PK persevered due to the lack of Blues' finish.
"We got through some kills, they had some good looks, they had some dangerous misses," Quenneville said.
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