GLENDALE, Ariz. — The extended agony that has been this Blues seemingly infinite series with the Coyotes continued into Friday night.
With the score tied and the Blues on the power play in the third period, defenseman Torey Krug took a slap shot that hit the left post, traveled across the goal mouth, hit the right post, and bounced away. How he didn’t hit the crossbar is anyone’s guess.
But just as Justin Faulk’s scoring has changed from last season, the Blues’ luck finally did too. With 6:50 to go in the third period, Faulk skated off the bench and into the play, took a pass from Jordan Kyrou, touched it briefly to control it and then drilled it in to break a 1-1 tie and the Blues went on to a 4-1 win and snapped a three-game losing streak against Arizona.
After the puck went in, Kyrou appeared to say “Nice goal.” Kyrou had made the play happen to begin with by winning a race down the ice to prevent an icing call on the Blues. Ivan Barbashev and Brayden Schenn added empty-net goals.
It was the second goal of the night and the fifth of the season for Faulk, who had that many all of last season in 69 games. Friday was Game 14 of the season for Faulk and the Blues, one quarter of the way through this truncated season. It’s the second time this season Faulk has had a multi-goal game.
This was Game 5 of a seven-game series between the newly minted rivals, which is unprecedented in the NHL and NBA and is even fairly unusual in Major League Baseball, where it has happened 256 times, but only five times since 1967. When Philadelphia and Miami played seven straight games last season (over five days, with two doubleheaders), it was the first time it had happened in baseball since 1979, when the Orioles and Twins played eight in a row.
The series now stands at 3-2 in Arizona’s favor, and Game 6, which was going to play regardless, will come up Saturday night.
As befits teams that have been going at it for 10 days now, the chippiness was dialed up a bit on Friday, with a few more post-whistle pushes and shoves then had been seen earlier. And with two more games to come in the next three days, they’re likely not done.
For the first time this season, the Blues faced a “hostile” crowd of 2,457 fans. Their previous road games, in Colorado, Anaheim and Vegas, had all been in empty arenas. And more than a few of the fans in the building on Friday night were wearing Blues jerseys.
The Blues scored first, with their second power-play goal in as many games. Forty seconds into an interference penalty on Christian Fischer, Faulk laid into a one-timer set up by David Perron and beat Darcy Kuemper. In his second game on the top power-play unit, Faulk got his first power-play goal of the season and fourth overall, one off his total from all last season. While the Blues have been at their best in five-on-five situations, only three of their previous eight goals at that point had been at even strength.
The Blues right now are in no position to be picky. The Blues have needed the power play to give them momentum at worst and goals at best, and goals have become a valuable commodity for them.
It briefly looked like the Blues had gone up 2-0 when Ryan O’Reilly stuffed the puck into the net just after the Blues had killed off a holding penalty on Colton Parayko. But a review showed that the net had been lifted in the air and the puck had entered from the side as O’Reilly battled for a loose puck on the goal line.
Instead, Arizona tied the game 8:44 into the second period. Jaden Schwartz blocked a shot but broke his stick in the process and his attempt to kick the puck out of the zone failed and kept the Arizona attack alive. The Blues had a couple other chances to get the puck and didn’t, and finally, Johan Larsson stuffed in the rebound of a Jordan Oesterle shot.
Then it was Arizona’s turn to think they had gone ahead, from the line of Conor Garland, Nick Schmaltz and Clayton Keller that has given the Blues fits for the past week. Vince Dunn couldn’t get the puck away from Garland, whose shot found a gap between Jordan Binnington’s left pad and glove and dribbled in. But the Blues challenged for offside and replays confirmed what Blues video coordinator Sean Ferrell had no doubt seen, that Arizona’s Christian Fischer had not been able to clear the zone before Ilya Lyubushkin had taken the puck in. Off came the goal.
A goal for that line would have been no surprise. They came into the game each having scored two goals in the previous four games between the teams and had a combined nine assists in that span.
“Five on five, we’re just allowing them to have too much offensive zone time without killing plays,” Berube said. “They’re quick and we’ve got to do a better job again getting numbers on the puck against them and killing more plays against those guys in D zone.”
“They’re a little smaller, really skilled guys and quick on their feet,” said defenseman Carl Gunnarsson, who drew back into the lineup after being a healthy scratch on Monday. “It’s never easy but I think we did a better job last game against them at home. So just trying to stay tight and it doesn’t necessarily start in the D zone but a little bit before that too. How we play our game, keeping the gaps tight, so we don’t end up in those situations, but when you do, it’s a little tough to defend but we’ll try to keep it on the outside and just stay tight on them.”
