The Blues are used to the underdog role by now. Just ask Brayden Schenn.
“Obviously people are writing us off, but in our locker room we believe in ourselves,” Schenn said Monday afternoon.
The absence of leading scorer David Perron — he remains on the NHL COVID list — only adds to that the “writing.”
But by now they’ve had so many injuries (and now) COVID-19 issues, they’ve developed a type of herd immunity. Just ask coach Craig Berube.
“Yeah, I think there’s a lot of character on this team,” he said.
No Perron? No Vince Dunn? No Jake Walman? No problem. At least that was the Blues’ intention Monday night at Ball Arena. But the Blues couldn’t send wakeup call in the direction of Stan Kroenke’s hockey team, losing 4-1 in the opening game of their best-of-seven playoff series. A two-goal burst early in the third period broke a 1-1 tie, before a late empty-net tally wrapped it up.
Game 2 is Wednesday here in Denver.
The top-seeded Colorado Avalanche won the Presidents’ Trophy as the NHL’s best team in the regular season. The fourth-seeded Blues didn’t even secure an invitation to Lord Stanley’s tournament until Game 52 of a 56-game regular season.
But perhaps like no other major team sport, the unpredictable can happen in the NHL playoffs. Unfortunately for the Blues, the expected happened Monday — a win by the heavily-favored Avalanche.
Whether it was Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantananen, Gabriel Landeskog or Cale Makar – Colorado’s stars shone bright Monday.
It took the Avs nearly six minutes to get their first shot on goal. But once they got going, man did they get going. To the tune of 18 shots on goal in the first 20 minutes, the most Jordan Binnington has faced in an opening period all season, and tied for the third-most he’s faced in any period this season.
As the period progressed, Colorado got its transition game going and the Blues had trouble keeping up. The Avalanche came at St. Louis in waves, and had Binnington not been ultra-sharp the Colorado lead would have been more than 1-0 at the first intermission.
Some of Binnington’s best work came 6 1/2 minutes in, when he robbed Landeskog on a backhand from basically Binnington’s lap and then handled a net-front rebound from MacKinnon.
With nearly 8,000 fans in the stands waving with pom poms, the atmosphere was as good as it’s been all year for a Blues game.
Vladimir Tarasenko, back in the lineup after missing eight of the last nine games because of an upper-body injury, nearly gave the Blues an early lead but his blast from the near slot clanged off the post just four minutes in. He had another prime chance a couple of minutes later but couldn’t solve goalie Philipp Grubauer.
You don’t see many fights in the playoffs, but Schenn and Landeskog got into it nine minutes in, which got everyone’s blood pressure up.
And then with 5:56 left in the period, Ryan O’Reilly was called for a rare penalty, tripping MacKinnon in the St. Louis zone. The last thing the Blues want to do in this series is put the potent Colorado power play on the ice — after all, the Avalanche scored 13 power play goals against the Blues during the regular season.
Sure enough, with 49 seconds left on the power play, Makar’s shot from the blueline got past Binnington with Rantanen flashing by the Blues goaltender to provide an effective screen.
The Blues killed off a second penalty, slashing by Justin Faulk, at the start of the second period and had a couple of prime chances by Mike Hoffman. The first came on a walk-in down the slot, and the second looked like a sure goal as he went for the wraparound with Grubauer out of position.
But Colorado defenseman Ryan Graves hustled back and just got his stick on the attempt into an otherwise open side of the net.
Nonetheless, the Blues were in this game only through the grace of Binnington. Before Hoffman’s ill-fated wraparound, Binnington somehow got his left pad on a Rantanen net-front shot in what basically was a two-on-none by the Avalanche with 9:50 left in the second.
Eleven seconds later, Sammy Blais went to the box for hooking, but the Blues killed this one off as well — as the Avalanche added to their shot total. (It was 32-16 in favor of the home team after two.)
But then lightning struck in the form of Jordan Kyrou. Robert Bortuzzo was engaged in a puck battle along the wall in Blues territory when Robert Thomas fought through two Colorado players to come up with the puck and skated down the right side.
He passed the puck to Ivan Barbashev, who sent a crisp cross-ice pass to Kyrou on the rush. Kyrou wasted no time, his one-timer beat Grubauer near side to make it a 1-1 game with 3:29 left in the second.
It was Kyrou’s first postseason goal in the NHL, and his celebration included a bow-and-arrow move on one knee.
The Blues didn’t take that momentum very far into the third period. Just 30 seconds in, Rantanen from below the goal-line passed to MacKinnon in the near slot. MacKinnon buried it.
At least two things went wrong on that play. For one, Marco Scandella needed to go in harder on Rantanen behind the net. And in front of the net, O’Reilly got over to MacKinnon a little late.
So it was 2-1 Avalanche, and then it became 3-1 Avalanche on a Landeskog deflection 8 1/2 minutes into the third. It was a MacKinnon shot from the blueline that Landeskog tipped. That gave Landeskog the Gordie Howe hat trick: goal, assist, fight.
MacKinnon added an empty-netter for his second goal of the night.
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