Winger Alex Steen is a microcosm of what ails the Blues.
Jaden Schwartz’s injury has hit the Blues hard. The team has lost three consecutive, and five of their last six games. The offense has all but disappeared – they’ve scored just six goals in those six games.
It’s no secret the Blues’ main source of offense, before the Schwartz injury, was the SST line (Schwartz, Schenn, & Tarasenko). Now with Schwartz down for a while, none of the other lines have picked up the slack. If you look at the numbers of the other forwards on the roster, there’s not a lot that sticks out as a positive.
Among forwards not named Schwartz, Schenn or Tarasenko, none have 10 goals. In fact, the next closest is Paul Stastny with seven. Here we are almost halfway through the season, and second-line player Alex Steen has a paltry three goals. That’s 3 measly goals.
The team got out to such a great start that it was easy to overlook the shortcomings of the other forwards. But now, it’s glaring. Steen is a player looking well past his prime. Paul Stastny is on pace for yet another sub-20 goal season. The bottom 6 forwards are not producing well at all. Paajarvi is all but a no-show, when he does get playing time. Jaskin, to his credit, has 11 points, but he pretty obviously won’t blossom into a power forward as he once projected.
The more I look at the rest of the forwards, the more I don’t like what I see. It needs an infusion of talent, which could come this season via trade, or more possibly I think, via young players in the pipeline. Tage Thompson is the most recent call-up, and he has a real opportunity to stick around, given the lack of production.
Boy this team could use Robby Fabbri. It’s easy to forget he was penciled in as a middle six forward before training camp began.
Thanks for reading.
Open Ice Notes 