Neighbours Rebuilding Offensive Confidence In Springfield

Things just weren't going to plan for Jake Neighbours with the St. Louis Blues to begin the 2022-23 season.

Neighbours, the Blues' 1st round selection (26th overall) from the 2020 NHL Draft, scored on opening night against the Columbus Blue Jackets - the second NHL goal of his young pro hockey career - but as Neighbours and the team's early-season struggles continued into November the decision was made to reassign the promising young forward to their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate in Springfield, Mass.

Having opened his pro career with nine NHL contests in the beginning of the last season before being reassigned to the WHL's Edmonton Oil Kings, and beginning this year with St. Louis, this past weekend's games with the Springfield Thunderbirds marked Neighbours first career AHL games.

After a loss and another pointless game in his AHL debut Friday night, things were pretty close to rock bottom for Neighbours in terms of offensive confidence heading into last Saturday night's game against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

The Thunderbirds jumped out to a 2-0 lead Saturday before the Penguins erased the two-goal lead early in the third period. It was in the final frame that Neighbours and the Thunderbirds broke through, with Nathan Todd breaking up a play in the Thunderbirds' defensive zone and springing Neighbours and Anthony Angello the other way on an odd-man chance.

Neighbours carried the puck into the offensive zone up the left wing before feeding Angello for what ended up being the game's deciding goal in a 3-2 Thunderbirds win.

"It was nine losses in a row for me there, so it was getting pretty, pretty dark," Neighbours told InsideAHLHockey.com including the eight in St. Louis and his first AHL game," But I'm just happy, obviously, [to] get back on the [score]board and get a win. That's all you want as a competitor is to win games."

The Airdrie, Alberta native is maintaining a positive attitude through a bit of early-season, and early-career, adversity and seems focused on working on his game and getting back on track.

"I've been fighting it a little bit the last little while in terms of just stuff not going in for me," Neighbours explained, adding, "I think I've been playing well it's just, you know, things haven't been going in. It feels good to get one and kind of get off the schneid there and get back to contributing."

Thunderbirds head coach Drew Bannister, despite not having had Neighbours in the AHL prior to this past weekend, is quite familiar with the player having spent the past two years worth of training camps, development camps and this past Traverse City Prospects tournament getting to know him.

"I know what kind of player he is, but you know, I think he's starting to kind of feel a little bit comfortable here and made a great play obviously on that winning goal for us," Bannister told InsideAHLHockey.com after Saturday's win. "He has a lot of good details to his game. And you can use him in a lot of positions, whether it's on the powerplay, [or the] penalty kill."

Through three games with the Thunderbirds entering this weekend's games, Neighbours has assists in back-to-back games - perhaps a sign that he is starting to get some confidence back in his game.

"I think just finding my confidence that I had in junior," Neighbours told InsideAHLHockey.com of trying to get back on track. "I think in junior I played with the puck a lot more, played in all situations for my team and going up to St. Louis, I found that I tried to make things really simple and almost try not to make mistakes and you don't always want to play that way. You want to, you know, take risks, calculated risks and whatnot. I think it's good for me to be down here and kind of feel the puck again and get my confidence back, get back to making plays and trying to be myself."

The jump from junior hockey to pro hockey is a big step.

To go straight from the Western Hockey League (WHL) to the NHL is quite a leap.

Suffice to say that some time in the AHL is par for the course for young players breaking into the pro hockey scene, and not necessarily something unexpected or to be looked down upon.

"It's good for these young players to be able to do that. Everybody seems to have to go through it," Bannister said, giving some in-house examples.

"You know, we have a lot of guys - Nikita Alexandrov - that's gone up. He was playing a lot of minutes for us before that. It's a big jump for those guys. Tyler Tucker, he goes up, he was playing 20 minutes on the back end for us. So you know, they've played really well for us, it gives these guys an opportunity to come down and play in all different positions, and then build their confidence up. I'm sure Jake won't be with us for too long. As long as he keeps on building his game and playing the way he is."