Unexpected offensive production from Colton Parayko a welcome bonus for Blues – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Blues might not count on Colton Parayko to provide offense, but he’s delivered it nonetheless this season.

With a goal Thursday in a 2-1 win over the Canucks, Parayko scored his seventh goal of the season, all of which were at even strength. Entering Saturday’s game against the Hurricanes, only three defensemen in the NHL had more goals than Parayko at evens: Quinn Hughes, Rasmus Dahlin and Jake Walman.

“I think I’m just trying to find spots in the (offensive) zone and find holes that I can jump into,” Parayko said. “I think forwards are doing a great job of finding us ‘d-men’ in general. It’s been good, I guess, that way.”

Through just 37 games, Parayko’s goal total already had eclipsed his outputs from the last three full seasons: four, six and two, respectively. Parayko is on pace to blow past his career-high of 10 goals, accomplished in both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.

“He’s been jumping up in the rush a lot this year, and using his shot,” Blues center Robert Thomas said. “He’s had some big, timely goals for us. Huge play from him.”

Among the highest goal-scoring defensemen this season, Parayko is a bit of an anomaly.

He doesn’t drive offense from a team perspective, as the Blues are a worse team offensively in every major possession statistic, according to Natural Stat Trick. While he is on the second power-play unit now, he hadn’t seen regular power play time in the season’s first 2½ months.

Among the seven defensemen with at least seven even-strength goals through Friday, only Parayko (40.7%) and Walman (37.8%) had less than 48% of their faceoffs come in the offensive zone.

Of course, Parayko’s primary job is to match up against the opposition’s best players, which is why he is second in the NHL with 19:58 of ice time per game at five on five.

“The offense is going to come with the time he’s on the ice,” Blues interim coach Drew Bannister said. “It’s not the offense that he brings to our team. He’s just been a monster being able to transport pucks. He’s been absorbing hits where he’s been under pressure and he’s able to skate pucks out. He’s got two or three guys on him, and he’s finding ways to break out and get himself out of that kind of pressure, and get the puck up to our forwards so we can keep playing north on the other end.

“There’s a lot of good things that are happening when he’s under pressure. He’s able to use his size, his strength to be able to skate out of that. The offense comes from him being able to defend that way and transitioning the puck into our forwards’ hands.”

When the top line of Pavel Buchnevich, Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou play together Saturday against Carolina, it will mark the 10th straight game they played on the same line. That’s the longest stretch of consecutive games together since Buchnevich was traded to St. Louis in 2021.

The previous long was an eight-game stint last January. They began the season together but were broken up after two games after Buchnevich suffered an upper-body injury.

In all 10 games under interim coach Drew Bannister, Buchnevich-Thomas-Kyrou has been a line. Entering Saturday’s game, they had combined to score 13 goals; the rest of the team, 14 goals.

How has Bannister fought the urge to break them up in order to create depth scoring?

“They’re having success,” Bannister said. “We definitely have to find a way to be able to score. I think the scoring is there, the ability to score in the bottom six or nine is there. We have to start doing it. We can’t rely on that top line, but they’ve played so well. They’ve created offense for us. … But we have to find some secondary scoring. I don’t think we’re at that point where we want to break that line up to find it.”

The Blues did not hold a morning skate Saturday in Carolina because there was a Virginia-North Carolina State men’s basketball game at PNC Arena in the afternoon.

Not counting back-to-backs, it was the third time this season the Blues have forgone a morning skate on the road — on Nov. 18 against Los Angeles (5-1 loss) and on Dec. 21 against Florida (4-1 win).