ST. LOUIS — Only once in the history of St. Louis Blues playoff hockey have they rallied from a two games to none deficit to win a best-of-seven series. And that took place way back in 1972 against the Minnesota North Stars.
It won’t happen this year. With their defense depleted and once again minus their leading scorer, the Blues fell 5-1 to the Colorado Avalanche on Friday at Enterprise Center.
Not even the presence of 9,000 loud Blues fans could help in the team’s first home playoff game since Game 6 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final against Boston. The Blues lost that one, 5-1, in a game that evened the series 3-3.
Now down three games to none in this series, the Blues will try to avoid elimination Sunday in Game 4 at Enterprise.
A surprise live appearance by Charles Glenn singing the national anthem helped set the tone for this one. After a bit of a tentative start, the Blues gradually took control of the game, outshooting the Avalanche by a two-to-one margin by midway through the second period.
But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Unfortunately for the Blues, the Avalanche were both lucky and good Friday night.
The second period started with 4-on-4 play, because Ivan Barbashev and Colorado’s Ryan Graves were both serving minors for roughing. But as the penalties ended, Robert Thomas sent a centering pass out to the center in the Blues’ O-zone.
Alas, the puck went all the way out to the neutral zone. . .just in time for Graves to come out of the box for a breakaway attempt. If he could catch up with the puck, that is. Goalie Jordan Binnington had two choices. Stay at home and defend the breakaway. Or race out of his net and try to get to the puck on time.
Binnington did the latter. But didn’t get to the puck in time. Graves shot from left wing with Binnington bearing down on him. The puck deflected off Binnington’s stick and into the net, breaking a scoreless tie just 1 minute 57 seconds into the second. Had the puck not hit Binnington’s stick it might have gone wide.
The Avs were in the right spot at the right time in making it 2-0 later in the second. And once again, Graves was in the middle of it. He sent a big shot from left wing that resulted in a big rebound the other way to Alex Newhook.
Colton Paryako was on that side, but relatively close to the net. But he lost contact with Newhook, who had a wide-open net to shoot into as Binnington had no time to get over. Not only was it the first NHL playoff goal of Newhook’s career. It was his first NHL goal, period.
A first-round draft pick by the Avalanche in 2019, Newhook didn’t sign with Colorado until March 31 of this year. He didn’t play his first NHL game until May 5. And combining regular season with playoffs games, it was the ninth contest of his NHL career.
Klim Kostin advocates take note.
So even though the Blues were getting the better of the play, they were on the wrong end of the scoreboard – 2-0 – with 8:23 to go in the second.
Just 31/2 minutes later it became 3-0. Once again, this came on a rebound, but this time it was a rebound that barely trickled out of Binnington’s grasp. Tyson Jost, the Avalanche player who knocked Robert Bortuzzo out of Wednesday’s game with an elbow to the face, swooped in for the goal.
Nikko Mikkola, one of the Blues’ defenders in the area, slammed his stick on the net in disgust after that goal.
For some reason, the Blues decided to challenge for goalie interference even though it seemed pretty clear there was not contact between Gabriel Landeskog and Binnington as Landeskog skated across the front of the crease before the Jost shot.
The Blues lost the challenge. They only challenged once in the regular season. So the goal counted and the lost challenge meant Colorado’s potent power play would take the ice.
So with just 3:52 left in the second period, the rout was on right?
Maybe not.
Almost immediately off the faceoff to begin the Avs’ power play, Ryan O’Reilly stole the puck in the corner behind the Colorado net and fed to a trailing Tyler Bozak racing down the slot. Bozak buried it, so just nine seconds after the penalty the Blues had a shorthanded goal and the Colorado lead was down to 3-1.
It was Bozak’s sixth goal of the year, and three of them have been shorthanded scores.
The Blues had 17 shots in the second period, matching Colorado’s total for the entire game at that point. Keep in mind, Colorado had 18 shots in the first period alone in Game 1. And 19 in the first in Game 2. So the Blues were accounting themselves well, but still trailed by two goals.
The Blues never managed much of a push in the third period. By the time Binnington was pulled with 3:38 to play, the shots were 8-3 in favor of Colorado. And the score was 4-1 by then with Brandon Saad faking out Binnington with a nifty move off an Avalanche rush.
With Binnington out of position, Saad had basically an empty net to shoot at.
Besides the shorthanded goal, the Blues did great work on the penalty kill, killing off all four Avalanche power plays. That wasn’t the case, however, on their power play which ended the season ranked higher in efficiency than Colorado’s. The Blues went 0-for-4 with the man advantage.
Graves then added an empty-netter, Colorado’s fourth of the series, for the final goal.
