GLENDALE, ARIZ. — This may have been Game 6 of the Blues-Coyotes series, but it was also Game 2, the second of three games in Arizona, and it’s no secret how that has gone for the Blues.
The Blues were 1-4 in the second part of a series in one city, even if this Blues-Coyotes fest has long since seemed detached from reality. They overpowered that again through stick-to-it-iveness. In a game that seesawed back and forth before going to overtime for the second time in the series, Mike Hoffman scored 1:39 into the extra period to give the Blues a 5-4 win and pull even in what’s become a mythical series. Game 7, as it is, is Monday afternoon.
Hoffman took a pass from Oskar Sundqvist and buried his shot in the top right corner, the first overtime goal the Blues had scored in four chances this season.
After losing three in a row, the Blues have now won two in a row. They had some extra challenges to overcome in this one. The Blues were without forward Jaden Schwartz, who was out with a lower-body injury. (He wasn’t on the ice for the final 3:40 of Game 5 on Friday.) That broke up one of the Blues’ set-in-stone partnerships of him with Brayden Schenn. Hoffman moved into that spot, and Austin Poganski got into the lineup for his first game this season and second in his career. (To make room for Poganski, who was on the taxi squad, the Blues sent Niko Mikkola, who has the advantage of not having to go through waivers, down to the taxi squad.)
The Blues took a 3-2 lead into the third period, where goalie Ville Husso had yet to allow a goal in any of his three previous starts. (He allowed four in the third, however, when he came on in relief of Jordan Binnington in Colorado in the second game of the season.) That came to an end 50 seconds into Saturday’s third, when Nick Schmaltz put in a puck that originated by Oliver Ekman-Larsson at the blueline, deflected off Jason Demers in front of the goal and set up perfectly for Schmaltz to get his sixth goal of the season.
The first goal of the season by Dryden Hunt, whose name combines legendary NHL goalie Ken Dryden and slightly less legendary journeyman defenseman Brad Hunt, who put in a puck that Husso had lost track of after Christian Fischer had flipped from behind the goal line into the crease and slapped it in.
Three minutes later, though, Jordan Kyrou did more Jordan Kyrou type things, flying down the ice to beat Antti Raanta with a quick wrist shot to tie the game with 5:37 to go. It was the sixth goal of the season for Kyrou, which was enough to send the game to overtime.
When the game began, any hopes for a quick start by the Blues were dashed when a turnover by Torey Krug gave the puck to Conor Garland, who scored 21 seconds into the game and has five goals and four assists in 10 games against the Blues. When Husso was in goal for Game 3 of this series, the Coyotes also scored on their first shot on goal. Others have gotten in on the act. The Ducks scored on their second shot against Husso, and the Avalanche on their third (which came in the third period). Only in his game against the Kings has Husso held off the opponent for a while.
But in his two most recent games, against Anaheim and Arizona, Husso allowed only one goal the rest of the way after that initial slip. On Saturday, he stopped the 15 shots he got in the rest of the period, some of them good saves and with a limited number of rebounds.
With a lineup that included Poganski, Jacob de la Rose, Mackenzie MacEachern and Kyle Clifford, all of whom but Clifford have been on the taxi squad very recently, offense could be expected to be challenged, but the Blues ended up leading 2-1 on goals by Clifford (his third of the season), and Zach Sanford (his second).
Clifford scored with 14:14 to go in the period after de la Rose forced a turnover and got it to the veteran forward who drove it home. With 6:38 to go, Ivan Barbashev, another member of the Blues Struggling Offense Club, dished the puck out of the corner to Sanford, who fired it between the screening Poganski’s legs and past Antti Raanta to put the Blues ahead.
The Blues power play, while not scoring, showed as much life as it has this season in the first. The second unit, now with Sanford in Schwartz’s spot, went out and did a strong job of keeping the puck in the zone and applying strong pressure on the Arizona goal, getting four shots on goal in the 90 seconds they were out there.
Arizona has kept the Blues close all series — the only time they had been behind by more than a goal in the six games was the third period of Game 1 and the final minute of Game 5 — and they pulled even with 14:33 to go in the second when Barrett Hayton postage stamped a shot into the top right corner of the goal with help from a screen by Garland.
But the Blues regained the lead 1:42 later. Ryan O’Reilly kept the puck in the Coyotes zone, got it back from David Perron in front of the goal where Raanta blocked his shot, but the rebound came right to Barbashev, who after failing to score in the first 13 games now has goals in back-to-back games as he plunked the puck in the open half of the net.
