ST.
LOUIS – Who thought this was possible a month ago?
We
don’t know how things will shake out in the end, as things can
change from day to day, but in a span of 26 days, the St. Louis Blues
went from being eight points out of a playoff position to holding
down the final wild card in the Western Conference.
It
didn’t go according to play, but a playoff-like atmosphere
developed between the Blues and Vancouver Canucks, and when Philip
Broberg scored at 3:42 of overtime to send the Blues to their fourth
straight win, 4-3, over the Canucks at Enterprise Center on Thursday,
it moved the Blues (35-28-7) above the playoff line in the Western
Conference for the first time since Nov. 6 by matching their season-high fourth straight win.
“That
was a playoff game and boy, what momentum swings in it,” Blues
coach Jim Montgomery said. “I really liked our resilience.”
“Yeah,
that was an incredible atmosphere,” said Blues forward Dylan
Holloway. “Our fans were super loud. You could feed off that
energy. After ‘Tucksy’ scored, they were jumping. It was really
fun to be a part of. I thought our crowd was awesome tonight.”
Tyler
Tucker, aka ‘Tucksy,’ also had a goal and an assist and Zack
Bolduc scored, while Jordan Binnington, while not tested often, made
15 saves.
“I
think it’s the same thing, you’ve got to keep sticking to what’s
made us successful here lately,” Broberg said. “We’ve just got
to keep that going here the last games.”
It
was a crazy up-and-down, emotional game with plenty of playoff
implications, and the emotional roller coaster was none more evident
than the third period after it was a nip-and-tuck 1-0 game through 40
minutes.
Then
things didn’t necessarily open up, but guys …
“Made
really good plays, made really good shots,” Montgomery said. “And
there’s more desperation offensively, so you saw that from both
teams.”
Let’s
get into the Three Takeaways:
*
Blues are showing incredible resiliency – You want to talk about a
range of emotions, then this was the game for you.
The
Blues started this game well but were kept off the scoreboard by
Canucks goalie Kevin Lankinen.
When
Vancouver pushed in the second, the Blues had to absorb the
counter-punches.
And
when Bolduc made it 1-0 at 15:47 of the second period finally
breaking through, one wondered with so much at stake whether it would
be difficult to get scoring chances in the third period.
Well
…
The
Canucks came out and sent a strong message to start the third that
they weren’t going to relinquish the second wild card that easily.
When
Kiefer Sherwood tied it 1-1 at 1:11 of the third and then Brock
Boeser scored the first of two goals, including his 200th
in the NHL, that gave Vancouver a lead at 6:35, now it was the
Canucks’ turn to try and lock down a tight one-goal lead.
Maybe
earlier in the season, the Blues would have wilted.
Not
these Blues, not this day.
“The
talk on the bench was great,” Montgomery said. “It was just,
‘Let’s just go get it back, plenty of time. Let’s get back to
the goal line, let’s get back to playing in the offensive zone.’
The talk on the bench was very positive. It was never, ‘What did we
just give up?’ We’re staying in the moment really well mentally.”
Tucker
and Holloway would restore the lead in short order. They scored 24
seconds apart and the Blues regained the lead 3-2, with Tucker
scoring at 9:28 off a face-off win by Brayden Schenn, and Holloway
finishing off a Jordan Kyrou pass at 9:52 to make it 3-2.
“Yeah
obviously a huge goal,” Tucker
said. “Just
tried to get it through. Obviously a big win by ‘Schenner’ there.
It was fortunate enough to go in.”
Tucker
then blocked a Sherwood shot that began the sequence for the go-ahead
goal.
“As
soon as I touched the puck, ‘Rouzy’ was yelling for it, so I knew
that he had some speed,” Holloway
said.
“He usually gets excited like that when he's buzzing up the ice. So
as soon as I passed it to him, I tried to get on my horse and go back
post. He made a helluva pass over and all I had to do was tap in.
“That's
where we've grown so much as a team, not getting too high, not
getting too low. We knew it was going to be a tight-checking game.
That's another team trying to get into the playoffs just like us. We
knew it was going to be hard. Down by a goal, we still had that
belief. Even when it went into OT, we still believed that we were
going to win. I think that's probably the biggest thing that we've
grown on so far.”
And
when Boeser scored the tying goal at 19:56 to tie the game 3-3, it
was a gut punch that could have provided devastating affects.
Again,
a mental fortitude was tested and one was passed when Broberg
finished Schenn’s pass off a 2-on-1 – that Holloway sprung –
and ended the game and put the Blues into the wild card when he went
backhand for the finish at 3:42 of overtime.
“I
just tried to drive the net and he was able to do a great pass and I
just tried to take it to the backhand and just happy it went in.
“It
speaks a lot to the belief in this group. Nobody stopped working. We
came back and I thought we played a very good game today.”
*
Tucker/young players are growing into quite the prospects -- Here we have a pressure-packed game with
tremendous playoff implications, and there is Tucker, Jake
Neighbours, Holloway, Broberg, Bolduc all in the middle of it.
Tucker
came up with clutch plays with the game on the line, played 15:49
with five hits and five blocked shots and none bigger than the one
that led to the Holloway goal.
These
are valuable lessons that the young Blues are gaining, not only in
the immediate but for the future.
“It’s
a lot of guys, right? Jake Neighbours hasn’t been in this kind of
stretch run, Bolduc and then you have Tucker, right,” Montgomery
said. “We’re starting to see these guys. The experience they’re
getting down the stretch run is only going to help us next year and
for years to come, and that’s why we’re very thankful our team
has been able to play so well to get into these types of games like
this. This is not only going to help us this year but years to come.
“I’ll
say this for Tucker. He’s really a good offensive defenseman, and
as he matures in this league, you’re going to see plays like that
more and more. He really understands … his hockey brain is really
good. It’s underestimated by a lot of people and I think people
will see that over the next couple of years of how good of a Blue
he’s going to be for us.”
Broberg
added, “I
think [Tucker’s] playing great. He’s made a huge impact and he’s
an unbelievable guy too. I’m happy for him.”
I’ll
admit I had Tucker written off a long time ago. When he was cut from
training camp and assigned to Springfield after clearing waivers, the
Blues had seven guys (including Scott Perunovich and Pierre-Olivier
Joseph) in front of Tucker, who was eighth on the depth chart, and
with the acquisition of Fowler, he was essentially in a no-win
situation until he wasn’t.
It’s
tremendous perseverance from a seventh-round pick with one last
chance who’s made himself a reliable, dependable NHL defenseman in
the end who keeps growing.
*
Game-tying goal late could be costly point to give away? -- We’ll
know more when all is said and done, but should the Blues miss the
playoffs by a point – like the 2017-18 season – they’ll look
back at the sequence of events that led to giving up a costly point
in this game.
It
all started when Justin Faulk, with time and space along the wall,
instead of just playing the puck into open ice in the neutral zone or
into the Vancouver zone, made a critical mistake and played it into
the Canucks bench from his own zone and brought the face-off back
into the Blues zone with 17.5 seconds left.
And
even after winning the face-off, Faulk was killed off along the wall
by Jake DeBrusk and another puck wasn’t cleared right away, but the
puck did get moved out into the neutral zone, but the Blues allowed
the great Quinn Hughes to shift around Pavel Buchnevich, find Elias
Pettersson at the offensive zone blue line, and veteran Ryan Suter
had vacated the opposite side to move to his right and help the play
in the middle left Boeser alone and he stepped into a slap shot from
the right circle to beat Binnington and tie the game 3-3.
It
could have been a momentum-zapper – it left 18.096 stunned – but
ultimately, it wasn’t. However, it was a point given away, which
could go a long way in the end.
“I
thought we should have scored into the empty net twice [Alexey
Toropchenko and Buchnevich], so you’ve got to end the game there.
We should have executed better. We won the face-off, that puck’s
got to get out and then the last thing is on that line rush, we’ve
got to have sticks protecting middle ice and they were able to go
east-west on us five feet inside the blue line. That shouldn’t
happen to us.”
It
shouldn’t, but they were able to conquer the gut punch.
“It's
definitely deflating, but that's where we've grown as a team,”
Holloway
said.
“I think early on in the year we probably get down on ourselves,
but as soon as that happened, we weren't very happy, but the message
on the bench was just stay with it, we've got this, we're going to
win. We had that team belief. When guys are stepping up and saying
that, it kind of chills the bench a little bit, kind of cools us off
a little bit. We were lucky enough to win that in OT. ‘Schenner’
and ‘Broby’ made a helluva play.”
