Let's Go Blues

One thing which severely limits Stewart is when the Blues take penalties or play 4-on-4. He does not kill penalties and rarely gets 4-on-4 ice time. With the Blues taking 6 penalties and having two 4-on-4s in regulation - there was 14+ minutes of ice time (took off the time when Nashville scored in the PP) in which Stewart never had a chance to see the ice. He wound up with only 13:57 of ice time - 4th fewest minutes on the team. Only Reaves, Nichol and Sobotka had less. It is interesting how present Sobotka appears even with small amounts of ice time, while Stewart seems to disappear when not playing as often.

Blues need the PPs for Stewart to shine, IMO. He just is not as effective in 5-on-5 play. Hopefully that changes, but it certainly was not showing against a quality opponent - which was a problem last season also. It's nice hearing about all the great shape stuff, but prove it against tough opponents - not teams on the serious downswing like Detroit (it is fun saying that.).

Am I alone in being impressed by the amount of hustle from Nichol and Sobotka?

Also, I was disturbed by how much the PK looked like the ineffective, let's-just-wait-and-see-what-they-do-with-the-puck PK from the dark days. Not on every PK, but it certainly didn't look as good as it did in the Detroit game.