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The Blues 7-4 last night in Calgary to the Flames in what likely was a very frustrating game for Blues fans.
The Blues opened the scoring with a 4 on 4 goal from Vladimir Tarasenko less than 4 minutes into the game. Tarasenko scored a pure snipe goal into the upper left corner after a drop pass from Colton Parayko. Watch the goal
here.
Around a minute and a half later, Mark Jankowski would even the score at 1. The play seems innocent enough until you notice Joel Edmundson deciding to camp out in the far face-off circle as possession gets dicey for the Blues on the other side. He gets caught watching as the puck caroms to the middle of the ice, arriving late to Jankowski who lets a slap shot go from high between the circles. Unfortunately, Jake Allen seems to have a decent look at this shot from pretty far out and seems to be on a decent angle but his glove simply missed the shot. Watch it
here.
About 9 minutes later, Jankowski gets his second goal, again the result of a bad play by Edmundson and not the strongest goaltending by Allen along with a coverage breakdown. Edmundson gets control the puck behind the Blues net and very weakly rims the puck around boards to the awaiting Jankowski. Jankowski feeds Sam Bennett and the puck squirts to Jaromir Jagr. Both Kyle Brodziak and Parayko commit to Jagr, leaving Jankowsi wide open cutting to the net. Jagr gives him the pass and Allen bites early on Jankowski’s backhand fake, allowing him to easily slide the puck into the far side of the net. Watch it
here.
The tie the game back up less than 3 minutes later. Alexander Steen and Tarasenko apply an effective forecheck along the wall with Steen gaining control of the puck. Steen feeds the puck to Brayden Schenn in the slot who breaks his stick on the one-timer. Instead of a shot on goal, Schenn’s attempt slides right to Jaden Schwartz who one-times it into the back of the net. Watch it
here.
Goalie Mike Smith doesn’t come back for the second period and Eddie Lack has to enter the game for the Flames posing a prime opportunity for the Blues but they don’t take advantage, generating only 4 shots in the period. The game heads to the third period tied, 2-2.
Sam Bennett breaks the tie just over 5 minutes into the 3rd period as the trend of poor defensive play and questionable goaltending continues for the Blues. This time the culprit is Carl Gunnarsson as he makes a very weak play at the Blues blue line, giving the puck up to Jankowski who takes a shot from just beyond the top of the circles. He doesn’t get a lot of carbon fiber on it (can’t say wood anymore with sticks these days) and the shot hits Allen right in the chest but he fails to corral or control it, leading to a rebound that deflects off Robert Bortuzzo’s skate and goes right to Bennet for the goal. At this point, I likely would have pulled Allen for Carter Hutton, partially because of trying to shake up the team to play better in their own end and partially because Allen wasn’t exactly bailing his teammates out a ton.
About 6 minutes later, Alexander Steen evens the score. Steen takes a pretty harmless shot from near the wall, beyond the circle but the puck deflects off Michael Ferland and past Lack.
Less than a minute later Ferland redeems himself with a power play goal. How the Flames got the power play is likely a mystery to most Blues fans. The penalties that generated the power play occurred after Dmitrij Jaskin drove the net, trying to put a backhand past Lack. On the play, Lack ends up down though Jaskin appeared to do an admirable job of avoiding Lack. In the scrum that ensures, somehow Oskar Sundqvist was assessed a double minor for roughing while Brett Kulak only receives a single minor. Once NHL TV lifts the blackout, I’ll have to watch this again as I could not determine why the Blues would have ended up shorthanded based on my live view of the play.
The Blues battled back again though, tying the game less than 15 seconds on
this beautiful one-timer from Tarasenko.
The celebrating was short lived though as Kris Versteeg would put the Flames up for good less than 2 minutes later. Paul Stastny gets stripped of the puck at the Flames blue line, creating a 3 on 3. Robert Bortuzzo doesn’t take command of the situation, failing to communicate with Vladimir Sobotka as to who he should take. As a result Versteeg is left free just outside the left circle. Versteeg takes a very slow cross ice pass and one-times it past Allen. The pass is so slow that Allen is completely square to Versteeg by the time he shoots but he just misses the shot. This is simply a goal that cannot be allowed at this stage of the game. It’s also yet another goal against Allen from beyond the circles. You can watch the play
here.
With the Blues pressing to tie the game with a little over 2 minutes left, Schenn makes a bad pass that is intercepted and leads to a 2 on 1 against Schenn. The Blues recover from this and actually turn it into a 2 on 3 before Johnny Gaudreau circles the net and feeds Mark Giordano cutting in from the left point. Giordano cuts to the net and gets Allen to go down early before he slides the puck to Gaudreau who is now cutting to the far post for an easy goal.
Michael Frolik caps off the scoring with an empty net goal.
Game stats of note:
- Only Gunnarsson, Parayko and Sobotka are even. All other Blues are minus
- Blues had as many giveaways (14) as takeaways (likely the 1st time this season)
- Schenn and Parayko had 3 giveaways each
- The Blues only had 5 shots from their defense
- Allen had an 83.3% save percentage
- Steen had 4 blocks. Jaskin had 3
Today the Blues sent Beau Bennett back to the AHL. I part of me hopes this means Patrik Berglund is going to come off injured reserve in a day or so. Very unlikely. It's likely they are just saving the money until Thursday.
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers
Nashville Predator's Paul McCann,
Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and
Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others will donate in their name.
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