MONTREAL _ The Blues didn't blow any leads on Wednesday night but Colton Paryako bungled an easy play in his own end in the final seconds that led to a Montreal goal with 10.5 seconds to play that sent them to a 3-2 loss to the Canadiens.
Parayko failed to make an easy clearance of the puck out of his own end, or even to just hold on to it and run out the clock, instead choosing to make a cross-ice pass to Joel Edmundson. (Edmundson said he called for the puck from Parayko and it was spinning when he made the pass.) But Montreal's Brendan Gallagher deflected the puck to Tomas Tatar in the slot in front of the Blues goal, where he got the puck back to Gallagher, who slapped it past Jake Allen to cost the Blues what looked like at least one point and the good vibrations of a late comeback of their own.
"We're not playing well enough to win hockey games," coach Mike Yeo said, "and when you do that, one play can make a difference."
"That one play, it's not the reason we lost the game," Edmundson said. "We lost the game in the first two periods."
Even if the Blues had won, Brayden Schenn though, the team didn't deserve a win.
"It's a tough one to lose but we weren't any good tonight," Schenn said. "Yeah we almost snuck out a point there, maybe two, but as a team I don't (know) if we deserve to win hockey games. We've got to start working harder for one another."
It looked like the Blues would send the game to overtime when Schenn scored a power-play goal with 3:29 to go in the third, and all the Blues needed was Parayko to rim the puck around the boards to secure that part of the game. It didn't happen.
The Blues now have just one win and four points through six games.
The Blues got two power-play goals, one by Schenn and the other by Vince Dunn after a slow start that saw them with just three shots on goal in the first period. They also gave up a goal to Montreal's Max Domi just 39 seconds into the game before settling down and allowing Montreal just 23 shots on goal.
