ST. LOUIS — Blues-Kings II, like all the other sequels for the St. Louis Blues this season, was no match for the original.
One night after a 4-2 Blues win over the L.A. Kings, the teams were back at it on Sunday night and the Blues got manhandled, losing 6-3 at Enterprise Center in a game that only got that close after the home team didn’t have much time to take advantage of it. The Blues now are 0-2-1 in the back half of two-game series that will be the staple of this season.
After a rough NHL debut in Colorado, where he gave up four goals in one period of relief work, Blues goalie Ville Husso had a first start that didn’t go a whole lot better. This time, he gave up five goals, which still succeeded in cutting his goals-against average almost in half, from 12.15 to 7.01. It was by no means an easy night for the young Finn, who faced 28 shots in the first two periods as the Kings had twice as many shot attempts as the Blues.
It’s not just that the Blues have lost their three encores, it’s that they haven’t looked particularly good in any of the games. The second half of a two-game series has continued to be an unsolvable riddle for the Blues. In their previous two back halves of two-game series, the Blues lost 8-0 to Colorado and then 2-1 in a shootout to San Jose. Both of those games came with an off day in between the games. If the thought was that with these games against the Kings on consecutive days that might change matters, it didn’t.
The Blues scored the first goal, but then gave up five in a row and didn’t get their first shot in the second period, when the wheels fully came off the wagon, until almost halfway through the stanza. What had been a one-goal deficit quickly turned into a four-goal hole. In the second period of those three games, the Blues have been outscored 8-1. Two goals in the third period made it close before the Kings scored an empty-net goal with 16 seconds to play.
The Blues now head off on a four-game trip, starting with two in Las Vegas where they’ll get their first look at former captain Alex Pietrangelo’s new team.
The game got off to a promising start for Husso and the Blues, as the goalie comfortably caught everything that came his way, limiting the rebound chances for the Blues. The Blues took the lead with 5:34 left in the period after Brayden Schenn won a center-ice faceoff, Jordan Kyrou carried the puck into the offensive zone and passed it back to Schenn in the left circle, from where he scored his third goal of the season and Kyrou got his third assist.
The last 2:29 though didn’t play out as well. Torey Krug was called for interference (though Andreas Athanasiou might have instigated most of the contact) and 42 seconds later, the Kings tied it. Colton Parayko blocked a puck with his skates, and when it came out, Alex Iafallo swatted it past Husso, who didn’t seem to know where it was.
Twenty-three seconds later, Carl Grundstrom put the Kings ahead for good.
First he danced around Vince Dunn at the blueline, leaving the defenseman spun about, then avoided a sliding Niko Mikkola and put the puck over Husso’s right shoulder.
Not long after that, Ryan O’Reilly was called for slashing, and the Kings skated the clock down to 19.2 seconds before the Blues were able to control the puck enough for a whistle.
While the Blues killed off that penalty, they did not turn the tide. Gabriel Vilardi scored 6:25 into the second when Dunn’s attempt to pass to Schenn was stolen by Dustin Brown, who set up Vilardi for a backhander.
Just over two minutes later, Adrian Kempe spun away from David Perron and advanced on Husso, with Anze Kopitar tipping in his shot in front of the goal. Craig Berube called time and met with his team, and also began rearranging lines in an effort to get some offense going, but it didn’t change much.
The Blues got their first power play of the night with 4:52 to go in the period, but it didn’t produce much and, when it ended, Lias Andersson stepped out of the box and took a long pass for a breakaway on Husso. His initial shot hit the post, but the rebound was stopped by the prone Husso’s skate and he was able to poke it in before Husso or his teammates could recover.
Schenn got his second goal of the game, with 13:59 to go when he put in a carom of a shot by Colton Parayko that hit off the end boards and came to him with an open side of the net to shoot at.
Forty-eight seconds later, O’Reilly got his first goal of the season, one-timing a shot from the blueline that hit someone in front of the net and then went in off goalie Jonathan Quick’s glove.
Quick was irate, thinking he’d been interfered with by Zach Sanford in front of the goal, but the Kings did not challenge the play.
