St. Louis Blues End Canadian Road Trip on a High Note

The St. Louis Blues have made a habit of sending fans on a roller coaster ride the past few weeks.  They’ll go on a three game losing streak, answer that with a six game winning streak and then go back the other way.  They rebounded nicely in Vancouver.

The Blues came out and dominated from the opening faceoff until the end even though the final scoreline might not have seemed indicative of that.  The Blues ended up outshooting the Canucks by a 2-1 margin or more in every single period.

Unfortunately for St. Louis, until the third period, the game always had that feel like it could slip away.  Too often in the past the Blues have hammered opposing nets and failed to score only to see a lucky goal go into their own net despite the opponent shot totals being kept low.

That was not the case on this night.  St. Louis never let up and left former Blue Ryan Miller bloodied and battered (in a figurative sense of course).  They peppered the net with 50 shots (49 against Miller) and were unfortunate to not score more than the three they got.

The Blues finally solved the mystery that was Miller when Troy Brouwer finished off a beautiful pass from Robby Fabbri at 16:18 of the second period.  Brouwer got “Cincinnati’ed“, for those of you following the NCAA Tourney, by putting in his potential second goal 0.1 seconds after the clock hit 0.0.

Luckily for the Blues, that would not be the last scoring they got.  The Blues got another goal at 11:54 of the third period when Vladimir Tarasenko banged one home for his 100th goal of his career in only 250 games and a 2-0 lead for the good-guys.

Then, the unthinkable happened late in the game.  The St. Louis Blues actually scored an empty net goal.

Alex Pietrangelo almost got one right after the Canucks pulled Miller from the net.  His would have been incredibly impressive since he shot it from just left of his own net.

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Instead the actual empty netter came from Jaden Schwartz who scored off a two-on-one break set up by Paul Stastny at 18:54.  It was a fitting end to a well played overall game by the Blues and a good end to a road trip that started well in Dallas but soured when the team went north of the border.

Negatives:

The powerplay wasn’t very good.  The Blues did go 1 for 4 on the man-advantage, but this is more of an eye test deal.  With the exception of the Brouwer goal, the Blues powerplay seemed to revert to midseason form when they struggled to even get into the zone.

The passing wasn’t very good on the powerplay or just in general in the first period.  The Blues’ man advantage has often been a bit of fool’s gold throughout the year, but they’re picking a bad time to get some struggles again.

Kevin Shattenkirk, for whatever reason is getting a little careless in his defensive zone.  He hasn’t been made to pay for it yet, but some of the passes he’s made in front or around his own net makes one tighten up in the rear.

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Positives:

The Blues got the win and ended a losing streak before it picked up steam.  Yes, you have to take into affect the Canucks were fielding a lot of AHL players but that’s even more reason to feel good about the win.  The Blues could not put away cellar-dwellars in Calgary and Edmonton, so at least they had enough in the tank to fire away at the net and take advantage of a team of many minor leaguers.

Brian Elliott showed no signs of rust in his first game back from injury.  Now, it should be noted that Jake Allen looked great in his first full game back from injury and then hit a shaky patch once the conditioning issue hit, but that shouldn’t happen to Elliott since both goaltenders are healthy and will likely split the time from here on out.

The empty net goal was big for confidence.  The Blues have struggled all season long to score goals in an empty net and have surrendered their fair share of leads because of it.  The team may have already been up by two, but getting that last one just gets the monkey off the back a little bit.

The Blues’ offense continues to roll.  It was a bit shaky by not scoring more early on, but they had three goals in the end.  According to FoxSports Midwest team leads the league in goals scored per game since February 28 with 4.00, which is nice.