Four St. Louis Blues Still Playing In Denmark, But For Wrong Medal

The luck of the St. Louis Blues seemed to follow their players to Denmark at the World Championships. The team suffered an injury and now the remaining players are playing for the wrong colored medal.

The 2018 IIHF World Championships have been interesting. You have to say that. However, things have been up and down for the members of the St. Louis Blues that went over there.

There have been great plays, including Dmitrij Jaskin scoring four goals. There have been scary moments, such as Jaden Schwartz getting injured in Canada’s quarterfinal game.

There have also been surprises. One of the biggest involved all four remaining Blues players in this tournament. The surprise is that none of them will be playing for gold.

That’s right. Both Team Canada and Team USA got upset in the semifinals. Now, none of them will play for the tournament’s ultimate prize.

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The Canadians’ result was more of a surprise, but at least the game was respectable. Shockingly, Switzerland scored the opening goal of the game and the Canadians were scrambling from thereon.

Two of the Blues figured heavily in the scoring. Brayden Schenn picked up an assist and Colton Parayko scored off that assist. Sadly, it was too little, too late. That goal was Canada’s second, but they were down 3-1 at that point.

Joel Edmundson picked up a penalty that led to the Swiss’ game winning goal. However, Edmudson had no choice after a botched play by the Canadian goaltender.

"Moments later, Kuemper made an atrocious play behind his goal, handing the puck to a Swiss player and forcing Joel Edmundson to take a hooking penalty. Late on the power play, Kuemper then badly overplayed Kevin Fiala with the puck to the side of the net, and Fiala simply passed in front where Gregory Hoffman had a tap in into a wide open net, restoring the Swiss lead.” – Andrew Podnieks, IIHF.com"

https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/k/kuempda01.html also gave up a soft goal to open the game, so this result could have easily been 2-1 Canada. It still seems odd that with the plethora of goaltenders Canada produces, they could not find a better one than Kuemper for this tournament. Perhaps everyone else did not want in.

As stated earlier, at least the Canadians and Kuemper kept it respectable. It took 45 saves from a goaltender you’ll likely never hear of again, Leonardo Genoni, to keep Canada from winning.

Team USA got embarrassed. The Americans were outshot 41-20 and outscored 6-0 by Sweden.

Adding salt to the wound, former Blues forward Magnus Paajarvi scored one of the six goals. Also spoiling the day was the fact that Tage Thompson played so little.

Thompson had seen his PT go down throughout the tournament. However, insult to injury, playing in 2:49 over three shifts is pretty bad. Also, 90% of that came in the third period when the game was over. Thompson only played 36 seconds in the first and not at all in the second.

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So, now all four remaining Blues are going to face the other for the Bronze medal. Sometimes you actually get more entertaining games in bronze medal games because everyone just lets loose.

It still stings that none of these players will be playing for gold when they should be. There were plenty of other superstars on both teams, but it seems the old Blues luck still catches up to everyone. Even internationally, they can’t win the big one.

The Americans beat Canada, in a shootout, in the tournament opener. Now, they play again for the Bronze on May 20.

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