The homeward-bound Blues returned to the Enterprise Center on Tuesday after traveling through an extensive stretch of road games. Unfortunately the boys must have misplaced their offense along the way. They could not find it in the baggage claim.

Playing in only their second in The Lou since Feb. 12, the Blues were buzzed and badgered by a fast and feisty bunch of Senators from Ottawa. The Blues looked slow. They were oddly bashful about shooting the puck. (Again.) The special teams malfunctioned (Again.) The Senators picked the pockets of the air-headed Blues for 19 takeaways.

And this is how the Blues were embarrassed in a 4-1 loss by an opponent that entered the building at 14th and Clark with a 19-31-5 record that had them at 28th in the league in points percentage (.391.)

The Blues had a chance to recover from their New York-Newark hangover but couldn’t get the blood going, managing a feeble 20 shots on goal at five on five. They had one power play that produced two harmless shots. And Ottawa beat the STL penalty killers for two goals. The Blues, 0-3-1 in their last four, are officially in a rut until further notice. Like the Dylan song asks: “When You Gonna Wake Up?”

What’s going on here?

Is it time for the Blues to take a note from Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers and go on a 12-day Panchakarma cleanse?

“It’s on us players in the room to figure it out,” Blues forward Brayden Schenn said following the Ottawa oddity. “We have too much talent, too much pride in that room and we will. Like I said before, it’s adversity right now and we’ll work our way through it here starting next game.”

May I offer an opinion?

What we’re probably seeing is an example of something the smart people refer to as regression to the mean. It’s all about how data levels out over time. If a variable is extreme over a period of time (good or bad), you can expect it to move closer to the average over time. It doesn’t always happen, of course. But in baseball, when a hitter bats .428 in the month of April and takes hundreds of at-bats over the next five months, he won’t have a .428 average at the end of the season.

There’s some of that going on with the Blues. In my Blues’ analysis this season, I’ve occasionally cited underlying metrics that pointed to potential trouble. That stuff is easy to laugh off as nerd-brain gobbledygook, but that’s a mistake. If nothing else, the metrics-based warning signs are worth monitoring.

So what am I talking about here?

Things like shot volume and possession. And shot quality. Unsustainable trends in shooting percentage, power-play success, and penalty-killing prowess. The gradual flattening of a high save percentage by the goaltenders over time. The cooling-off phase for goal scorers after a red-hot streak.

The Blues were able to skate through the warning signs for much of the season, but now it appears to be catching up to them. Again, this isn’t abnormal. It’s fairly predictable. And it doesn’t mean doom and gloom and damnation; trends can begin to reverse and go in the opposite direction at any time — negative to positive, or positive to negative.

And the Blues’ current downturn consists of only four games, and the small sample size should be viewed with caution. That said, the Blues were fortunate to overcome some of their own deficiencies to get the results that made them a Top 10 NHL team. But that could be changing now. We’ll find out soon enough.

Anyhoo …

1) In their first 52 games the Blues scored 55 percent of the goals scored at five on five. But based on the underlying metrics, they should have scored 47.3% of the five on five goals. That’s a significant difference. The message: the Blues were doing better than they should have, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see the trends neutralize.

2) Another glaring example could be spotted in the high-danger shooting areas of the ice, the slot and the crease. Over their first 52 games the Blues ranked 27th in the league with a high-danger shot percentage of 45.3% at five on five. Frankly, that’s terrible. Despite the ominous trend, the Blues still outscored opponents 57-48 (54.3%) from the high-danger spots. That wasn’t sustainable.

3) A high shooting percentage has been an important element of the Blues’ high-scoring offense. (Shooting percentage represents the frequency of the team scoring on one of its shots – just as save percentage represents the frequency of saves made by its goaltenders.) The STL shooting percentage – ranked No. 2 in the league at 11.6% through the first 52 games – is only 6.7% over the last four. Four games is an awfully small sample. And though the Blues’ shooting percentage will likely rise again, will it reach the 11% range again? That’s questionable.

4) On a related note, a hot-streak shooter almost certainly will go through frustrating cold spells. The Blues have avoided scoring slumps for most of the season, but it’s hitting them now.

During the team’s 6-0-1 roll that culminated with a 4-0 win at Chicago on Feb. 27, forwards Pavel Buchnevich, Vladimir Tarasenko, Robert Thomas, Jordan Kyrou, Brandon Saad, Brayden Schenn, and Ivan Barbashev combined for 21 goals and 28 assists. In the last four games, the same seven forwards have combined for three goals and four assists.

5) When a team is straining to score goals at even strength, it can be boosted by a pick-me-up from the special teams. That scenario hasn’t materialized for the Blues. Their lofty top-five league rankings on the power play and penalty kill were destined to slide a bit, and it’s occurring at a bad time.

In their first 52 games the Blues scored on 27 percent of their power play opportunities and killed 85 percent of opponent PPs. Exceptional … and likely unsustainable. During the current 0-3-1 turbulence the Blues are 0-for-7 on the power play and killed off only eight of 12 penalties (66.6%).

6) Through 52 games the Blues had an overall save percentage of .916 that ranked fourth among the 32 teams. Over the last four games Jordan Binnington and Ville Husso have combined for an overall save percentage of .872. The team’s overall save percentage on high-danger shots was a league-best .848 through 52 games. But over the last four games, the overall high-danger save percentage is .805. Not a big deal; just a reminder of how difficult it can be to sustain an unrealistically high performance level.

Aside from that …

The effort could be better … yes. Their fuzzy focus is leading to stupid turnovers and easy goals for the opponent. That was a big problem in the giveaway to Ottawa.

The Blues should be shooting the puck more; over the last four games they’ve scored only six goals during five on five play. In managing to grab only one of a possible eight points over their last four contests, the Blues have averaged 25.8 shots on goal per 60 minutes; only two teams have done worse than that over the last week.

The Blues are struggling against the faster teams they’ve seen lately – especially New Jersey and Ottawa. With opponents skating furiously out of the defensive zone for easy transitions, the Blues can’t get set up on their forecheck. The flaw is concerning.

Finally: congrats to Brady Tkachuk for scoring his first NHL goal in his “home” rink in St. Louis. Tkachuk, in playing in his fourth NHL season, is only 22 years old. He already has produced 79 regular-season NHL goals.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

Bernie invites you to listen to his opinionated sports-talk show on 590-AM The Fan, KFNS. It airs Monday through Thursday from 3-6 p.m. and Friday from 4-6 p.m. You can listen by streaming online or by downloading the “Bernie Show” podcast at 590thefan.com  — the 590 app works great and is available in your preferred app store.

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All stats used here were sourced from Hockey Reference or Natural Stat Trick.