Pressure?
The St. Louis Blues took any pressure from being down 0-2 and turned that noun into a verb.
In Games 3 and 4, they pressured the Canucks, relentlessly, resplendently, and reminded the young upstarts that these aren't just Stanley Cup defenders, but also Stanley Cup contenders.
Sure, the Blues have worn down Vancouver with body checks over the entire series, but notably in Monday's Game 4 win, the Blues wore the opponent down with the forecheck. As if the ice was tilted, the Blues kept the puck in the Canucks' defensive zone, gobbling up minutes and gnawing at Vancouver's soul. In the end, the Canucks turned over the puck 19 times, compared to just eight times by the Blues.
The series is now tied, two games each, following Monday's 3-1 win.
Credit Craig Berube and his masterful line makeups and shakeups.
Jaden Schwartz-Ryan O'Reilly-David Perron, what chemistry!
And while the winning is a credit to the Blues' style of play, it's incredible to think that two huge storylines going into the bubble were the pedigree of Jordan Binnington and the return of Vladimir Tarasenko ... and neither played in Game 4. Or Game 3.
This isn't to say Binnington couldn't have won Games 3-4. He wasn't terrible, per se, in the first two games, but with the back-to-back, and the team down 0-2, it made sense to go with Jake Allen in Game 3.
Thirty-nine saves later, it made sense to thus go with Jake Allen in Game 4.
With Tarasenko, he played in the exhibition game and round robin, and showed some glimpses of his dangerous old self, but overall, still looked rusty. So Berube put him on the shelf. Tarasenko was "unfit to play."
But just like the Blues did in the regular season, they won without their (arguably, sure) most-talented player. They did it by embracing the system. By applying pressure, instead of feeling it.
Look at it from this perspective _ in the past two games, the only Vancouver goals have come off Blues' miscues. In Game 4, Brayden Schenn misread an Alex Pietrangelo pass out of the D-zone. And in Game 3, there was that dumb Sammy Blais penalty that led to a power play, and the Marco Scandella-Colton Parayko run-in that led to an inopportune turnover on Allen's front porch.
That's it.
Vancouver hasn't created any goals in five-on-five flow since Game 2.
Remember Game 2?
Heading into that thing, I worried that if the Blues blew that one, it could be a huge problem. Maybe not in normal circumstances, but being down 2-0 in the bubble was different, because the Blues also hadn't won a game in the exhibition round or the round robin. That was so much failure in a 20-day span. But one thing I didn't account for was _ what if the Blues in Game 2 played really, really well ... but still lost? And that's what happened.
They lost in overtime, but they could still hang their helmet on their effort, as if it were a win. They felt like themselves as a team, even in a loss. And _ just watching their body language in the postgame Zoom press conference, they were angry and hungry. Sure enough, they played really, really well again in Game 3.
And Game 4.
Now we have ourselves a series.
