Observations From Blues' 5-2 Loss Vs. Bruins

ST. LOUIS – A three-game winning streak on the line, a chance to gain a measure of revenge against the Boston Bruins. It was all on the line for the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday.

But an all-too-familiar script played itself out despite an early lead and a fight back, but in the end, it was the Bruins who scored three unanswered goals in the third period of a 5-2 win at Enterprise Center.

Robert Thomas scored twice, Pavel Buchnevich had two assists to extend his point streak to four games, and Joel Hofer made 26 saves but it wasn’t enough to prevent the Blues (11-13-7) from gaining that elusive three-game winning streak.

“I thought we were a little too loose after the first 10 minutes,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “I liked our first 10 minutes of the game, and I didn’t mind our first whatever it was when we tied it up (in the third period). I don’t know if it was eight minutes into the third. That wasn’t too bad, but besides that, we were very loose not stopping in the house. Defensively, not sprinting to loose pucks enough.”

Let’s take a look at the game observations:

* Blues had a chance to grab game after tying it in third and failed – The Blues were down a goal heading into the third period against a team that had been spotless in that situation (13-0-0) heading into this game.

But when Thomas tied the game at 4:51, it leveled the score at 2-2, and on home ice, one would think the home side would step up the intensity and take control of the momentum.

That was hardly the case because the Bruins, now 14-0-0 when leading after two, found another gear and scored the next three.

The third goal, and ultimately the game-winner scored by Mark Kastelic, his second of the night, was a perfect example of the struggles the Blues have faced far too often.

First off, the Bruins chip a puck into the Blues’ zone, and Tyler Tucker gets beat to the goal line by Sean Kuraly. Now the scramble is on, even as Dalibor Dvorsky gets to the puck, having to make a quick decision, he softly banks it off the boards where Nikita Zadorov is waiting to pick it off. Off the wall, the Bruins defenseman throws it towards the goal, and the puck hits Kuraly, falls into the crease where Kastelic beats Justin Faulk to the loose puck and swat it in at 8:01:

KASTY AND KURLS DOIN' WORK 💪 pic.twitter.com/nLcDDfJWlv

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) December 10, 2025

One, you’d like to see Tucker win that race to the puck, and two, you want Dvorsky to protect it a little better or make a better decision instead of just loosely throwing a puck away knowing the point man is there waiting to intercept it, and then you need to see bodies in and around the net for better protection. All failed attempts.

“We've got to win the goal line race,” Montgomery said of Tucker. “Puck's dumped in, they've got one forechecker, our second-quick should have been there to be able to get that puck and get out of our zone. They were changing, and they got out there and they got five guys established and we never got possession again. They out-muscled us at the net.”

Defenseman Justin Faulk said, “the third goal changed momentum quite a bit. Felt like a little bit of a drop after that and then they were able to kind of take the momentum a little bit and add another one with the fourth.”

* Another struggling second period – The Blues had a lead by doing a lot of decent things.

But the second period for the most part outside of a good one Sunday against the Montreal Canadiens, the Blues are a minus-14 in the middle frame.

Make it minus-16 after getting outscored 2-0 and a 1-0 lead turned into a 2-1 deficit thanks to the Bruins (18-13-0) maintaining possession in the O-zone, the Blues scrambling and chasing for much of the period and generating little to nothing in the offensive zone. They were outshot 13-3.

“We just couldn't get it by their trap in the neutral zone, couldn't set up our forecheck and kind of get in with possession, chip it to a guy with speed to kind of set it up,” Thomas said.

“We turned the puck over too much in the last 10 minutes of the first and we talked about putting it to the goal line, needing to play a little more in their end,” Montgomery said. “I think we were loose with the puck and our angling of the puck was not where it needed to be, so it gave them a lot of momentum going towards their net.”

* Losing too many loose pucks, wall battles – It was one of those games where if a puck was along the wall, the Bruins were coming away with it. If there was a loose puck, the Bruins were coming away with it. If there was a battle for it in the open ice, the Bruins were coming away with it.

That comes with working harder to get it and maintain possession, and in a lot of cases, sustaining offensive zone time, and Boston was scoring not the pretty goals but the greasy ones with traffic at the net and even getting bounces to go their way.

It happened on Fraser Minten's first of two goals that tied the game 1-1 at 12:48 of the second:

9️⃣3️⃣ KNOTS IT UP! pic.twitter.com/2Fpq6nr45o

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) December 10, 2025

It happened on Monten's second of the game at 11:33 of the third that made it 4-2 and for all intents and purposes, put the game away:

DOUBLE MINT GOAL ‼️ pic.twitter.com/SMCuMCcIwm

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) December 10, 2025

“In both zones, to be honest, right,” Montgomery said. “Their second-quick, which is the term we use, was quicker than ours.”

Why is that the case in the 31st game of the season? Yes, off nights do happen, but this team has little margin for error, and needing to put a winning streak together. That’s not a way to get it done, because a lot of the little things, including these, are what wins and loses hockey games.

* Bottom forwards struggled mightily – It’s tough to blame and point fingers at some of the guys in the lineup, but let’s face it, the Blues are a battered and bruised group right now, and when guys like Fraser Minten and Kastelic are each scoring two goals as some of the Bruins’ bottom six forwards who are also used in their top six when needed, it left some of the bottom-tiered guys open and vulnerable.

Aleksanteri Kaskimaki, playing in just his fourth NHL game, played 10:35 and was a minus-2; Dvorsky was a minus-1 in 12:13; Matt Luff, playing in just his second NHL game in two years, was a minus-1 in just 7:44 of ice time and he had a great chance to score early on an errant play that could have gone well for St. Louis; Logan Mailloux was a minus-2 in 9:49; even veterans like Oskar Sundqvist was a minus-3, so was Dylan Holloway; Brayden Schenn and Pius Suter each was a minus-2. But the guys playing fewer minutes and lesser roles were taken advantage of on this night and they had to be counted on even more when Nick Bjugstad went down with an upper-body injury early in the second period becoming the fifth forward in the last week-plus to be sidelined:

Bjugstad takes this arm/elbow to the head and gets ridden into the boards by Zadorov at 5:24 of the second and didn't play another shift. #stlbluespic.twitter.com/JJrloY9HrY

— Lou Korac (@lkorac10) December 10, 2025

“Obviously it’s a team game as a whole,” Faulk said. “It’s not easy to take guys in and out of the lineup that are kind of every day guys, impact guys when we’re still trying to find our game a lot more consistently. It’s tough, but for sure the guys that are coming in, we’ve had to call up in our lineup are hungry and they’re going to give their best effort and try and help the team as much as they can. There’s definitely no lack of energy from the new guys, which is always a good thing. We just have to find a way to keep it going and find some continuity.”

* Undermanned organizational depth showing – The Blues are really being tested right now, both at the NHL level and even at Springfield of the American Hockey League. Maybe some of these call-ups aren’t ready for this kind of competition yet outside of Luff, who’s been here often before, but now it looks like Hugh McGing will be the latest to get into the lineup pending Bjugstad’s status, and it didn’t look like his equipment was going out to Centene Community Ice Center for Wednesday practice ahead of a road game Thursday against the Nashville Predators.

* Thomas, Buchnevich heating up, finding chemistry – The bear in the room for a lot of the Blues’ struggles has been the inability of the top-end guys to produce offensively.

Tuesday was another example of if the Blues are to get out of the doldrums, guys like Thomas and Buchnevich being on the same page and the consistency of playing together produces the benefits will go a long way.

Buchnevich not has five points (two goals, three assists) in a four-game point streak and Thomas has seven points (three goals, four assists) the past eight games, including three points the past two games all playing with Buchnevich.

The two combined for the opening goal at 5:27 on the power play when Thomas whipped a one-timer from the high slot past Jeremy Swayman on a high-low play to make it 1-0:

If you picked Robert Thomas in your First Goal Vote, you're a winner! pic.twitter.com/S6zSfpeHjF

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) December 10, 2025

And Buchnevich made a heads-up play by intercepting Andrew Peeke behind the net and feeding Thomas in the slot for the 2-2 goal at 4:51 of the third:

What has two thumbs and two goals in this game?

THIS GUY 👇 pic.twitter.com/oQYGhXHSO7

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) December 10, 2025

“He’s been playing great lately making everyone around him better,” Thomas said of Buchnevich. “It’s not just one or two games. It’s been five or 10 games he’s been playing real well. He’s picked a lot of us up lately. He made two great plays and I was just able to bury it, but he’s playing real well.”

* Blues can’t string together three straight wins – Three tries, three failed attempts for the Blues to win another game beyond two.

It was Feb. 23-March 1 when the Blues won four in a row last year, their first three-game winning streak that fueled their second-half run. But that’s not something they can try and bank on all the time.

“It’s a hard league and that’s what we strive for is that consistency so you put yourself in that situation where the opportunity is there,” Faulk said. “It didn’t go our way tonight and we’ve got to come back and bounce back and try to put ourselves in that position again. It starts with one and just keep it rolling. Obviously consistency’s been a real big issue for us this year. I think overall our game’s been getting better. We just got to keep pushing and keep grinding and hope for the next one.”

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