COLUMN: Blues playing a playoff tune as of late

It was fitting that the one to score the winning goal in overtime to secure a playoff spot for the St. Louis Blues was their captain.

Brayden Schenn scored after the first minute of overtime to deliver the Blues their fifth consecutive win on Sunday, Jan. 28, in St. Louis.

“You just take off whenever you see a turnover in overtime,” Schenn said. "Whether he gets you the puck or not, you just create space for him if he is going to carry it up. He’s got great vision and he found me.”

By beating the Los Angeles Kings 4-3, the two teams now control the two Western Conference wild card spots. Interim head coach Drew Bannister said just after their overtime loss to Boston on Jan. 13 that for St. Louis to make the playoffs there will likely be no breathing room through the rest of the regular season. And with the Columbus Blue Jackets arriving at the Enterprise Center on Tuesday, Jan. 30, there still isn’t any breathing room for the Blues.

“There is no breathing room,” Schenn said. We're chasing a lot of teams, teams are chasing us now, and it's gonna be tight right to the finish or probably at least up to the trade deadline.”

The winning streak began when the Blues were six points out of the last playoff spot after losing three straight games. One of the teams ahead of them was the Seattle Kraken, whom they beat 4-3 in overtime on Friday. The urgency of fighting for the final spot has kept the intensity going through a perfect three-game road trip to the West Coast before they clashed with the Kings.

“The urgency of finding ways to win hockey games just goes hand in hand with where we’re at and not necessarily being at a playoff spot,” Bannister said. “I think a lot of it has to do with who we’re playing and the teams that are good. They're all meaningful games at this point of the season and where we're at.”

There’s something to the way they’ve been winning recently as well. Sunday was not just the Blues’ fifth straight win but also their fourth straight victory by a 4-3 score. St. Louis was down 3-1 late in the second period against Calgary before winning behind Brandon Saad’s two goals. They withstood a three-goal rally by Vancouver in the third period before winning on an overtime goal by Schenn. Pavel Buchnevich scored the tying goal in the third period and the winning goal in overtime to win at Seattle.

“A game against Calgary, the game against Seattle, and again today, those are the three teams that we're we're fighting for position and we're able to come up with basically the four-point games because they're big swings in the standings,” Bannister said.

Something changed in this team. It wasn’t that long ago when the Blues were more likely to blow a multi-goal lead than come back from a multi-goal deficit. It’s what led to the coaching change last month. Under Bannister, who arrived from the AHL affiliate, the Blues have erased a deficit 17 times, compared to only eight under Craig Berube.

In almost every other sport, a mid-season coach firing is usually akin to a team waving the white flag on the season. However in hockey, because of how frequently coaches are fired before the new calendar year, it’s meant to rejuvenate the team into playing to their expectations. It’s how Berube was put in place to lead St. Louis to the Stanley Cup in 2019 and now there’s hope the same can be attempted this year.

“I think early on in the year, whether it was going our way or wasn’t going our way, we weren’t sticking to the structure and the program,” Schenn said. “Even though we had a good game plan in place, it felt like guys were doing their own thing. When you stick to the team structure and guys are getting rewarded offensively and you’re winning hockey games, it makes guys buy in more.”

However, even with their progress, the Blues are still 11 points behind the third-best team in the Central Division (Winnipeg), which means making the playoffs will mean fighting for the wildcard for the rest of the season.