For the Blues, the talk of making the playoffs has shifted from an “if” to a “when” after a rollercoaster season that has left them with more than a few sore spots where the team has struggled.
The Blues on Monday, however, repeated one of the things that has contributed to this season of inconsistency: the inability to deal with the weaker teams in the West Division.
Anaheim, which came into the game 30th out of 31 teams in the NHL in points, gave the Blues fits, or the Blues gave themselves fits with the Ducks just coming along for the ride. The Blues managed to pull out a 3-1 win that moved them another step closer to another trip to the playoffs. The Blues could secure a spot as early as Wednesday with favorable results in other games in the division. The Blues now have a point in six straight games, five of them wins.
The heroics came from the unlikely subject of defenseman Robert Bortuzzo, the last opening-night player on the team without a goal. For weeks, his teammates have been telling him that that night would be the night he finally scored, and their prediction finally came true. Robert Thomas left a drop pass for Bortuzzo, and his slap shot was blocked by goalie John Gibson. Jordan Kyrou got hold of the rebound below the goal line and Bortuzzo moved in close to the goal where he waited and pounced when Kyrou passed him the puck to break a 1-1 tie.
Bortuzzo goals are rare – this was just his 17th in 411 career games – that the celebrations become magnified. Bortuzzo, needless to say, enjoyed this one.
The Blues added an empty-net goal by Ryan O'Reilly with 8.6 seconds left, with an assist by David Perron. It was the 600th career point for Perron and his 400th with the Blues.
It wasn’t like the Blues couldn’t see a tough one like this coming. Anaheim had just split a four-game series with Los Angeles, one of the teams chasing the Blues, doing serious damage to the Kings’ playoff hopes. Blues coach Craig Berube reminded his team of that Monday morning.
“They should know better but we discuss it for sure,” he said. “I look at the way they played against the LA Kings the last three games and they played really good hockey. They’ve got a lot of young guys in their lineup that are doing some really good things, so they look good to me and they’re gonna give us a tough game. Obviously their team has changed since the deadline and things like that and they’ve got a lot more youth in there. We’re going to have to be good.”
The Blues came into the game having played the top three teams in the division, Vegas, Colorado and Minnesota even at 9-9-2. Against the four teams that aren’t likely to make the playoffs, Arizona, San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim, the Blues are 13-10-5, lowlighted by a 1-4-1 mark against the Kings. If the Blues had taken care of business against those teams, they would have clinched a playoff spot already.
The Blues came out Monday playing like they did the last time they played Anaheim, when they took just one point out of four from the Ducks in a memorably unspectacular weekend series in March in which they blew a 2-0 lead in the second game and lost 3-2 in overtime. That was one of several times this season when it looked like the Blues were just not going to be a playoff team this season.
In the first period this time, the Blues spent the first several minutes trying to get the puck out of their own end, repeatedly turning it over and giving the Ducks golden chances that could have put them up a couple goals early if they were better shots.
Instead, the Blues kept getting in the way and blocking shots – they had nine in the first period – and breaking up passes and Anaheim didn’t actually force Jordan Binnington to make a save until there were nine minutes to go in the period. Anaheim’s best chance was about four minutes in, when Trevor Zegras backhanded a turnover off the post with an open side of the net in front of him.
The Blues had some chances, the best coming on two shots in quick succession by Ryan O’Reilly, the second going off the post and bouncing away. Jake Walman had a good look with about 5½ minutes to go and shot wide.
Brayden Schenn put the Blues ahead almost six minutes into the second period on a power-play goal, the 10th game in the past 11 the Blues have scored with a man advantage. He and Jaden Schwartz, who had the puck, entered the Ducks zone with speed, Schwartz fed the puck to Schenn who postage stamped the puck past goalie John Gibson for his 14th goal of the season.
If the goal was going to wake the Blues and restore order, it didn’t. Twenty-five seconds later, Sammy Blais put the puck really hard into the skates of Colton Parayko as the Blues were exiting their zone. Parayko couldn’t handle the puck, Ryan Getzlaf came in alone on Binnington and scored to tie the game.
The rest of the period featured the Blues fighting repeated battles to control the puck an just not be able to do it. It seemed as if every pass was bobbled by the recipient, if it ever got that far.
