The Blues’ season is underway.
It’s time for me to start Rolling Four Lines:
FIRST LINE
A new hockey season. The Blues’ first game. And right out the chute, two goals for David Perron.
But of course. Just put two more in his basket. Add it to his collection. Perron is one of the best goal scorers in the NHL, and yeah I can back that up with the numbers.
In the past three seasons before this one, Perron was tied for 36th among NHL forwards with his rate of 1.21 goals per 60 minutes in all situations. That’s 36th among 294 forwards that have played at least 2,000 minutes over that time.
Perron has the same goal-scoring rate as Artemi Panarin, Patrick Kane and Andre Burakovsky. He has a higher goal-scoring rate than Patrik Laine, Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Brandon Saad and Mark Scheifele. And Perron’s goal-scoring rate is just a sliver behind that of Gabriel Landeskog and Filip Forsberg.
He shoots. He scores. Over the past three seasons Perron has scored on 15.6 percent of his shots on goal in all situations, ranking 25th among the 294 forwards that have logged a minimum of 294 minutes.
Since the start of the 2018-19 season only 16 NHL wingers have more goals than Perron’s 69 count.
Perron’s two goals in the Blues season-opening 5-3 win at Colorado upped his St. Louis career total to 171. That rankings 11th overall in franchise history, and eighth among forwards.
With two more goals Perron will move ahead of the great Red Berenson and into 10th place in Blues history.
And at age 33, he’s never been better.
David Perron is young at heart.
And a St. Louis sports treasure.
SECOND LINE
Goaltender Jordan Binnington was absolutely the difference in Saturday’s game. The Blues were terribly outplayed at five-on–five, getting only 34 percent of the scoring chances and 37.5% of the high-danger shots. Using the expected goals metric, the Avalanche should have scored 62% of the goals at five-on-five. They did not. Binnington wouldn’t allow it.
Binner stopped 25 of 26 shots (.962) at five-on-five including all seven from high-danger range. Colorado goaltender Darcy Kuemper gave up three goals in 21 five-on-shots for a poor save percentage of .857.
THIRD LINE
The Blues’ four lines worked hard to gain the five-on-five edge over the Avs in Saturday’s victory, but the home team maintained possession control.
The top line of Perron, Ryan O’Reilly and Brandon Saad had good moments and outscored the Avs 1-0 at five-on-five.
But STL’s best line was Pavel Buchnevich, Brayden Schenn and Jordan Kyrou. The trio was virtually even with Colorado in five-on-five scoring chances, and had a 3-2 advantage in high-danger shots. Buchnevich, Schenn and Kyrou provided consistent quality in their 9:06 of five-on-five ice time.
They outscored the Avs 1-0 and played so effectively that Natural Stat Trick assessed an expected goal share percentage of 54.3% for the line. No other Blues’ forward line combination that played at least five minutes at five-on-five did better than 31.1% in expected goals for.
FOURTH LINE
Welcome back, Colton Parayko. It was wonderful to see the mountainous defenseman skating, and moving and hitting without a hitch after being tormented by neck-and-back pain throughout last season. Parayko logged 27 minutes and 26 seconds of ice time, his most in a game since Feb. 23, 2019. He blocked two shots, had two takeaways, registered a hit, and was on the ice for three of the Blues’ five goals. With Parayko on duty at five-on-five, the Blues outscored the Avs 1-0.
It’s only one game, but Parayko’s hulking presence was a factor in keeping the Avs at a distance. Blues defensemen blocked eight shots in this game. As a group the Blues had a lousy second period. But in the first and third periods, the Avalanche had only two (total) high-danger shots at five-on-five. And after the game coach Craig Berube expressed satisfaction with his team’s net-front presence — a huge, never-ending problem last season.
Last season Binnington faced an average five-on-five shot distance of 39.6 feet. In Saturday’s win, Binnington faced an average shot distance of 35.4 feet at five-on-five. That’s quite a difference. But again, it’s only one game. And Colorado’s lineup was missing Nathan MacKinning and Gabriel Landeskog. But let’s keep an eye on average shot distance as the season unfolds. It could be a revealing statistic.
RANDOM THOUGHTS:
— Do the Blues really have to play at Arizona on Monday night? Them again?
— In case you were wondering: I didn’t talk about Vladimir Tarasenko in this piece. I wanted to give him two or three games before taking a look at his play.
— Song lyric that I can’t get outta my head:
Won’t you please, Won’t you please, Please won’t you be my neighbor?
— Thanks Mr. Rogers. Except I’m gonna change it to “please won’t you be my Neighbours.” … as in Jake Neighbours. The teenager led the Blues with three hits and looked terrific in his first NHL game.
— Brayden Schenn would be an excellent and honorable teammate-colleague in any line of work. He’d stick up for you, too.
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.
Follow Bernie on Twitter @miklasz
* All stats used here are sourced from Hockey Reference, Natural Stat Trick or Evolving Hockey unless otherwise noted. I thank them for the valuable assistance.
