The St. Louis Blues shipped up to Boston and stole a win on the road to return home tied in the Stanley Cup Final 1-1 against the Bruins.
The Bruins opened the series with a 4-2 win, but the Blues got their first Stanley Cup Final win in Game 2 with a 3-2 victory in overtime.
With a 1-1 series back in St. Louis, Blues fans were ready to party. It was the first Stanley Cup Final game in St. Louis since 1970 and the Blues were coming off their first win in a Cup Final game.
But the Bruins had other plans.
Boston scored thrice in the first period and never looked back. Patrice Bergeron opened the scoring 21 seconds into a power play midway through the opening frame, Charlie Coyle made it 2-0 with less than three minutes remaining, and it looked as if the Blues might be able to stop the bleedin' heading into intermission. However, Sean Kuraly scored a dagger with 10 seconds left in the first period, which the Blues unsuccessfully challenged for offside.
That penalty carried over into the second period with David Pastrnak driving that dagger home 41 seconds into the middle frame with a power-play goal of his own.
"I think they've got to make that challenge. It was close," Ryan O'Reilly said after the game. "It's unfortunate it puts us on the PK and they get one again right off the bat, so it kind of took the wind right out [of us]."
Ivan Barbashev gave the Blues some life 11:05 into the second period, but 67 seconds later the Bruins added another power-play goal, this one by Torey Krug, to go up 5-1 and chase Jordan Binnington from the net.
"Five goals he allowed, so he had seen enough," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "We just wanted to pull him and get him ready for the next game."
The Blues made it a bit more respectable with a Colton Parayko power-play goal for a 5-2 deficit early in the third period, but the Bruins hit the empty net and added another power-play goal for good measure for a 7-2 final score.
"I've got to be better. I've got to do a better job giving my team a chance to win," Binnington said after the loss. "They scored three goals in the first. That's never good. They're a good hockey team. We have to get back to our game, stay focused."
And Binnington lived up to that the rest of the way.