ST.
LOUIS – The old adage that good teams find ways to win when they’re
not at their best has found its way to the St. Louis Blues once
again.
And
in doing do on Thursday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the same
team that was last in the NHL to put together a three-game winning
streak has now matched a franchise record 11 straight wins.
The
Blues were not at their best, but they found a way for a second
straight overtime game when Robert Thomas’ power-play goal at 2:12
won it, 5-4, after blowing a two-goal lead in the third period at
Enterprise Center.
Jake
Neighbours scored twice to surpass the 20-goal mark for the second
straight season, and Thomas and Jordan Kyrou each had a goal and an
assist for the Blues (42-28-7), who moved two points ahead of the
Minnesota Wild for the first wild card in the Western Conference.
They matched the Stanley Cup-winning team of 2018-19 for consecutive
wins (Jan. 23-Feb. 19) and won their 10th
in a row at home.
“It’s
been a fun ride,” Thomas said.
“We’ve beaten some really good teams and we’re playing really
good hockey. We just got to consistently be there every single night
and that’s what makes a great team and that’s what we’re on our
way to be.”
Added
forward Oskar Sundqvist, who was part of the 2019 team, “It's
awesome. I was here for the last 11 straight wins. It's a good
feeling in our group right now. Even if we haven't played our best
games our last two games, but we're finding ways to win. That's
what's important right now.”
Jimmy
Snuggerud had an assist for his first NHL point in his second game,
and Joel Hofer won his fifth straight start with 24 saves.
“Another
one of those games where we didn’t think we played to our standard,
but finding ways, goalies are playing well, guys are making big plays
in big moments and keep finding ways,” Neighbours said.
Here
are Thursday’s Three Takeaways --
*
The power play finally connected – Even with the Blues scoring four
times at 5-on-5, it was a game in which they could have put it away
with better special teams.
Earlier
in the game, they had a 38-second two-man advantage lumped in with a
four-minute double minor for high-sticking and did nothing with it.
The
Blues led the game 3-2 and had the chance to put the game away then
but their unwillingness to be more direct allowed the Penguins to
stay in the game despite Neighbours scoring at 5:56 on a great play
by Snuggerud both defensively, then starting the transition
offensively to make it 4-2.
But
on the 4-on-3 in overtime, after Penguins defenseman Kris Letang was
called for slashing Kyrou, the Blues had to be more direct, they had
to take advantage of the open ice.
It
wasn’t clean, but Thomas and Kyrou worked the puck off the left
side and after corralling the puck, Thomas wired a wrister high glove
on Tristan Jarry to end it.
“They
pressured hard and we weren’t able to beat it early,” Thomas
said. “I missed a couple good looks. We did have some good looks. I
think just more consistent on the 5-on-3 and the couple minutes, I
think we had six minutes of power play 5-on-4. Got to find a way to
do a better job early in the game, but it came through in the end.”
*
Staying with it despite frittering away third-period lead – The
first period was as poor as the Blues have played in quite some time,
and coach Jim Montgomery attributed it to “energy.”
The
Blues just weren’t connected on the ice, their puck play was
passive, zone exits weren’t clean, and the Penguins (30-34-12) had
something to do with it, but they finally turned the game around in
the second period.
“We
just don't seem to have juice, and it's going to happen, but it's a
sign of a good team when you don't have our legs and we're still
pulling out wins,” Montgomery
said.
“This is a hard league to win in, as we found out earlier in the
year.
“I
thought we were significantly better (in the second period), I
thought we skated, I thought we worked better and I thought it led to
a lot of opportunities.”
Neighbours
tied the game 1-1 on a beautiful sequence with Philip Broberg, Pavel
Buchnevich and Thomas, who fed Neighbours on the last pass 39 seconds
in.
After
Pittsburgh took a 2-1 lead during a sequence that Thomas took a stick
to the face on a follow-through shot by Rickard Rakell, Buchnevich
tied the game 2-2 after Nathan Walker broke up a play in the neutral
zone, and Buchnevich used his stick magic to lift a backhand in at
6:48 before Kyrou whipped a wrister past Jarry for their first lead
at 3-2 at 8:05 on an incredibly strong flipper out of the zone in
stride by Cam Fowler.
“Got
the perfect spin on it, English on it too, right,” Montgomery said.
“So he could skate right into it. It was nice.”
But
after the Neighbours goal, the Blues, who were 0-for-4 on the power
play at the time, were not going to get any more man advantages
unless it was something egregious, and the Penguins had yet to have a
power play.
But
when a failed clearance of a puck seconds later resulted in Justin
Faulk taking a holding minor, the Penguins didn’t waste much time
all of the sudden making a game of it when it didn’t have to be a
game when Rakell scored from the high slot at 11:15 of the third
period, using all of 30 seconds to score on their lone power play to
make it 4-3.
The
Blues didn’t do a good job of closing the game out the rest of the
way either, and when Pittsburgh pulled Jarry, eventually it was
Rutger McGroarty scoring his first NHL goal at 19:35 to tie the game
4-4.
“We
have won all different kinds of games, but I am not happy that we
were up 4-2 in the third and we went to overtime,” Montgomery said.
“We have to close out games. We have to get better.
“Attention
to detail, knowing your responsibilities. There’s a couple mistakes
there in that (tying goal). It’s a wraparound goal, they make a
power move, but we shouldn’t be that far from the net.”
*
Holloway goes down, now what – When Blues forward Dylan Holloway
left the game late in the first period with a lower-body injury, as a
result of a McGroarty check in the Blues’ offensive zone along the
wall at 17:09 and Holloway trying one more shift roughly a minute
later, it would remove a 26-goal scorer and 63-point player from the
Blues’ lineup.
Now
what?
Who
can jump into the top six and play with Kyrou and Brayden Schenn, or
whoever it may be?
Well,
Zack Bolduc comes to mind. Snuggerud, who made a strong defensive
stick play that ultimately led to a beautiful pass to Neighbours for
the Blues’ fourth goal, would get more ice time and more
responsibilities.
Game
management was important at that time, and those that handled the
extra ice time handled the minutes effectively.
“It’s
kind of just a little scrambly on the bench,” Neighbours said.
“We’re trying to mix and match lines, get guys out there.
Obviously that’s an elite player for us, someone who plays in all
situations and a really important piece for our team. But we had to
focus on the task at hand. We weren’t playing great and obviously
it sucked losing Dylan. Just hope he’s OK and we get him back.”
Snuggerud
finished with 16:22 of ice time, significantly more than the 10:43 he
played on Tuesday in a 2-1 overtime win against the Detroit Red
Wings.
“Really
impressive. He’s been making a lot of plays,” Montgomery said of
Snuggerud. “I think once he gets used to the speed, strength and
less time and space in the NHL, he’s going to be a real good player
for us. He’s already playing well.
“It
gets a little difficult. It can, but we have a lot of players than
can play all three forward positions. And I found out that Snuggerud
can play left wing. It just worked out that I could manage the bench
quite easily with the depth of the talented players that we have.
“I
haven’t seen any egregious mistakes, and in the D-zone,
surprisingly, because he’s never played our D-zone before, he’s
executing really well. He cut the top off the one time, sprinted out,
made sure they stayed on the same side of the ice and Sunny was able
to get out and kill it. It’s a sign of a really smart player
because our D-zone’s very different than man-on-man.”
