Blues Relish Chance To Take Care Of Own Business

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MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- It all comes down to this: one game, one chance to control your own destiny if you're the St. Louis Blues.

It's simple math: win in regulation and you're in. Any other scenario, well, now the Blues (43-30-8), who host Utah Hockey Club on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Enterprise Center (FDSNMW, ESPN 101.1-FM), will rely on outside help for assurances.

The Blues, Minnesota Wild and Calgary Flames, all battling for two wild card berths in the Western Conference. Only two can make it, one will be left out.

Only the Blues and Wild control their own destiny. Calgary needs help, but a slipup by either the Blues or Wild would open the door for the Flames to burst through the barrier.

For the Blues, who are 1-2-0 against Utah this season, the notion of still controlling their own destiny is appealing and not having to rely on outside help in Game No. 82 is all the motivation they need.

"Yeah it is," blues coach Jim Montgomery said. "Just do our job and stay in the moment, good things will happen.

"Really excited. The word opportunity is such a positive word. It's an opportunity to seize the moment, to do something special. That's what's in front of us."

The Blues put themselves in this position with a history run, a franchise record 12-game winning streak, that's been followed by a recent 0-2-1 slide in which the Blues left at least one point on the table in their 4-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers and up to as many as three points, it's left some nervy moments here among the fanbase leading into the game.

"I think you just embrace it," said Blues center Robert Thomas, who carries an 11-game point streak (four goals, 19 assists) into the game. "The last couple of years we haven't been in this spot and it's been frustrating. You wanted to be in this spot, and I think now that you're in this spot, you've got to enjoy it. It's fun playing these kind of games -- the excitement and energy that's going to be in the building and throughout our locker room -- so we're looking forward to it. We're not scared of it."

This latest stretch of tough results even went back to the winning streak when the Blues skirted by their three home games at the beginning of the month but found a way. They've deviated away from some of the things that were making them so successful.

"Our puck pressure needs to be better than it's been," Montgomery said. "We've been playing the same, we haven't been playing in the last ... really five games, not three games, because results don't drive how we evaluate our team's last couple of wins, we could see it. It's the puck pressure, being more relentless like our first and third goals of last game (a 4-3 shootout loss against the Seattle Kraken). That's Blues hockey and we've got to get to that more consistently for 60 minutes."

The discombobulation of sorts among the forwards has coincided with the loss of Dylan Holloway (lower body injury).

"He's a driver, he's a guy that creates a lot of offense for us," Blues captain Brayden Schenn said of Holloway. "He's big and powerful, but at the end of the day, we'd obviously love to have him, but we've got to go out there and get the job done without him.

"On a consistent basis, maybe. It's not from a lack of trying or whatever that means. I just think we have to do a better job of it, getting pucks to the goal line, wearing it out, delaying deep, and building our game from there. Don't chuck pucks, don't so-called hope plays. You just have to execute with the puck a little better, hold onto the puck a little bit more and get bodies to the net."

Then again, the Blues had spent to much into putting that winning streak together that they have worn some some.

"It's hard to be close to perfect," Montgomery said. "It just is, and the league humbles you when you're not close to perfect. That's just what it is. It's just normal. You're not going to be able to play great when you're playing 18 games in the month of March. It's not happening."

The playoffs begin officially on Saturday. For the Blues, they begin Tuesday. A winner-take-all mindset.

"That's why you have a plan. You come to the rink with a plan and you execute it to the best of your capabilities, your team's abilities," Schenn said. "That's always something to fall back on. The excitement's going to be there in the building, that excitement's going to be in the locker room. Now you have to go out there and get the job done."

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