The Utah Hockey Club has been losing ground in the Western Conference playoff race. The St. Louis Blues have slipped into a more pronounced slump.
Each team will be feeling plenty of urgency when they meet Sunday at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
Utah is 0-2-2 in its last four games. It lost its last two games 3-2 in overtime at home, to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday and the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday.
In both games, Utah had 2-1 leads in the third period but failed to close out the victory.
“It’s frustrating, for sure,” said Utah forward Clayton Keller, who has four goals and 11 assists in his last nine games and leads the club in points (56), goals (18) and assists (38). “I think we’ve talked about it. We’ve had the right mindset. We’ve just got to keep going, learn from it. Having confidence, believing you can make the play in the (third period). I think that’s the next step.”
The Hockey Club did see progress in the last two games while banking a point in each.
“I think that last (Pittsburgh) game we took a step, this game was all right,” Utah forward Alexander Kerfoot said. “They got a couple bounces, and then that put us on our heels a bit, but we were still pushing. We controlled the majority of the game. We’ve got to find a way to get two points.”
Utah coach Andre Tourigny said his team must translate effort into goals when the game is on the line.
“Today we had seven scoring chances in the third period,” he said on Friday. “We need to finish more.
“We need to find ways to take quality shots. We need to find ways to get on the rebound and hit nets and stuff like that. But there’s stuff we can do better.”
The Blues have lost four straight games by the combined 16-4. They suffered their first two shutout defeats of the season during that stretch.
St. Louis fell behind the Colorado Avalanche 4-0 in the first period on Friday night in Denver while stumbling toward a 5-0 loss.
“Didn’t start on time, multiple games in a row now,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said.
And unlike earlier this season, the Blues haven’t shown the mental toughness needed to stage comebacks.
“We weren’t good enough tonight, and we need to be significantly better,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said.
“Realistically, you need to have a resilient mindset, a resilient attitude as a team to come back in games and not get frustrated by being down or not let that emotion just get completely drained,” Blues defenseman Justin Faulk said. “You have to stop it, you just can’t let it get to two, three, four. It’s something that our group needs to become a harder group mentally, and harder to play against.”
Utah won the first two games between these teams by 4-2 scores, on Nov. 7 in St. Louis and Jan. 18 in Salt Lake City. Keller, who grew up in the St. Louis area, has a goal and four assists in those games and 34 points and a plus-13 rating in 30 career contests against the Blues.
–Field Level Media
