Binnington puck mistakes costly in 5-2 loss to Wild, coaches and players lay more blame on overall play
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ST. LOUIS — It’s no secret how well Jordan Binnington plays the puck.
He’s actually one of the better goalies in the league to have honed in on this craft, making it easier to help the defensemen transition pucks from defense to offense with smooth efficiency.
New Year’s Eve was one of those rare occasions when Binnington’s stick not only let him down but also let his team down.
He owned up to it as well. There were two puck gaffes in the second period that cost the Blues dearly in a 5-2 loss against the Minnesota Wild on Saturday at Enterprise Center.
The Blues (17-17-3) could have closed out 2022 with a solid win and closed the gap on the Wild (21-13-2) in the Central Division, and they were off to a decent start with a good first period, but in un-Binnington-like fashion, the paddle let him down and both resulted in gift goals for Ryan Hartman.
The first came 1:40 into the second, when Binnington goes behind the net to play a puck. He missed it and got stick-checked off it. The puck winds up in the slot for Hartman, who skirts right by an unaware Brayden Schenn and buries a shot high glove for a 2-1 lead.
The second came 12 seconds after, of all people, Robert Bortuzzo tied the game 2-2. Bortuzzo finished off a pretty passing play with Jordan Kyrou and Pavel Buchnevich at 5:01 to get the Blues right back in the game, but then on another Wild rim into the Blues’ zone, Binnington goes behind the net, gets it and wires it around the glass only to have it picked off by Hartman, who throws it into the net as the netminder was slow getting back to his crease for a 3-2 lead.
Momentum gone, and the rest of the period — and game — went downhill from there.
“Obviously, the two goals I think affected us in the second period,” Binnington said. “I’ve got to be better. I was too casual, and it came back to bite me in the butt.
“… Yeah, it happens. They made a good read. Like I said, I think I was too casual. It’s not the game you want to do it either, you never want to do it. I think it kind of changed momentum there, and I think we were doing all right. Just got to get back to it.”
Nobody is going to tell Binnington to stop being so aggressive and to quit playing pucks. It’s been an area in his game he’s improved at with time. The defensemen appreciate, especially appreciate he giving them a head start in heading north with the puck, and the forwards benefit from it too when they’re able to get the kinds of passes they need in rhythm.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s not really on him,” center Robert Thomas said. “We’ve got to do a better job communicating. His back’s obviously turned to the play. He’s trying to pick the puck up off the wall and we’ve got to (tell him) he has help behind them and tell him where to put it. So it’s not on him. It’s on all the guys out there, we’ve got to communicate way better.”
Coach Craig Berube wouldn’t place the blame on his netminder either. But bottom line is, those mistakes were momentum killers. One early in the period after a solid first and one when you grabbed it by tying the game, only to relinquish it 12 seconds later.
“Whether they’re deflating or not, we’ve got to be stronger mentally than that,” Berube said. “Second period wasn’t good.”
And that speaks volumes more than anything.
Berube didn’t like the second period. The players didn’t like the second period.
“For me, it’s the whole period,” Berube said. “I thought we had a good first period, a lot of urgency. I thought we were skating. Then second period to me, we didn’t skate. We didn’t move the puck very well, we didn’t skate.
“I get the two mistakes on the goalie handles, but on the one, we could have helped him out on that, but we vacated the front of the net a little too early in my opinion. And on the second one, it is what it is, but we didn’t skate in the second period and didn’t move the puck very well because we were standing still.”
The Blues were outshot 14-5 in the period, they didn’t generate much offense, and again, puck play wasn’t clean, their forecheck disappeared and the power play once again was a grave letdown.
“Overall, the second period was a little bit of a letdown for us,” Bortuzzo said.
“I think in the first period that we had a lot of chances,” Thomas said. “We got the first goal and so yeah, I think we just got away from it in the second period there and they capitalized and we tried fighting back in the third, but we’ve got to clean up the second period.”
Blues goals were scored by Bortuzzo and Calle Rosen, who scored for the third game in a row. He has three of the Blues’ seven goals by defensemen the past five games. Their forwards have eight in that span, and that’s simply not good enough.
“One-hundred percent,” Berube said. “Too many missed shots again, not driving the net hard enough offensively, and tonight, we had a lot of attempts tonight, I don’t know, we had 31 shots on net, maybe another 30 attempts at least. We missed the net like 14 times I think. It’s too many. There’s a lot of times on our rush attack, we’re a good rush team, we’ve got good numbers, but we need to penetrate the middle of the ice better, and we need to be putting pucks to the net more.”
The Blues have had the Wild’s number the past so many years. This was Minnesota’s first regulation win here since winning 3-2 on Nov. 11, 2018. The Blues had gone 9-0-1 the past 10 games against the Wild, but it was evident out there in this game that not only has that gap been closed, the Wild has passed it up.
“Not good enough tonight. That’s the bottom line,” Berube said. “Listen, we made too many mistakes tonight to win the hockey game. End of story.”