Category: Sports News

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.”