ST. LOUIS — On Tuesday, Nathan Walker was at the rink in Springfield, Mass., when he got the phone call that he was being called up to the NHL. On Wednesday, he practiced with a handful of Blues at Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights. On Thursday, he skated into Blues lore.
Walker, born in Wales, raised in Australia, made his season debut for the Blues amid the team’s injury and COVID roster crunch and recorded a hat trick in the Blues’ 6-2 victory over the Red Wings before a sellout crowd at Enterprise Center.
It took something like that to overshadow a win by Charlie Lindgren in his first Blues start and the team’s sixth win in a row at home. They also got two assists from Dakota Joshua, another player who wouldn’t be with the team if not for everything that has gone wrong over the past two weeks. Walker, Joshua and Lindgren were all with the Springfield Thunderbirds of the AHL as recently as Nov. 27, less than two weeks ago.
Walker got his third goal, matching his career total coming into the game, with 10:33 to go in the third period. Torey Krug took a shot from the blueline that Walker, planted in front of the crease, got his stick on to tip past goalie Thomas Greiss. Walker knew right away it was his, and raised his arms in ecstasy after the puck went into the net. He was embraced by his teammates and the shower of hats on the ice began.
Walker will turn 28 in February and has spent the bulk of his career in the AHL (as well as two seasons in the Czech Republic) but on this one day, he lived out every hockey player’s dream. And in the strangeness of this Blues’ season, he’ll be going back to Springfield soon. As soon as the team has 18 healthy skaters (besides Walker) he has to be returned to the AHL. That could happen any day.
The Blues needed an emergency exemption to call up Walker, a 5-foot, 9-inch bundle of energy. They didn’t have enough space under the salary cap to add another player, but having played with just 19 against Florida on Tuesday, they were allowed to call up one player, and they tabbed Walker, who had six goals and 11 assists in 19 games with Springfield.
His arrival brought to five the number of players in the lineup Thursday who had spent time at Springfield this season, plus another, backup goalie Jon Gillies, who had been with two different AHL teams.
“It’s definitely nice,” Walker said. “I’ve been playing with the guys earlier in the year and they’ve been doing really well, so it’s good to see those guys again.”
Walker came into the game with three goals in 25 games of NHL experience, two of them with the Blues over the previous two seasons, and he almost matched it in the first period.
He started the scoring with a shot from the top of the right circle that trickled through the pads of Detroit goalie Alex Nedeljkovic.
Two shifts later, Walker drew a holding penalty that put the Blues on a power play, though they didn’t score. On his next shift, he scored again, this time from the left putting a shot through traffic and past Nedeljkovic.
“He’s a solid player,” Blues coach Craig Berube said Thursday morning. “He’s a good 200-foot player, he skates well, he competes hard, plays with a lot of energy and emotion, which is good for our hockey team. … He has the ability to score some goals too. He scores in the minors pretty consistently.”
Detroit got a goal back 4:17 into the second period from a familiar face, as Robby Fabbri scored on a quick shot from the right faceoff dot. It’s been more than two years since Fabbri was traded by the Blues to Detroit for Jacob de la Rose, but this was his first trip back. He got a nice ovation during the first TV timeout, when the Blues thanked him for his four seasons in St. Louis on the scoreboard.
Fabbri was called for a hooking period later in the period, and less than a minute after the Blues’ power play ended, they extended their lead to 3-1. Niko Mikkola took a shot from outside that Joshua tipped and Nedeljkovic stopped, but again, the puck trickled through his pads and Colton Parayko pounced on it, just ahead of Joshua, to put in into the net for his second goal of the season.
Ivan Barbashev followed Walker’s third goal with his fifth goal in the past seven games, and then Fabbri added a second. With 5.8 seconds to play, Marco Scandella threw the puck the length of the ice for an empty-net goal, his first of the season.
