Follow @stlgoalie While the Blues may have qualified for the playoffs Friday night thanks to the Avalanche’s victory over Coyotes in extra time, the Blues hurt their chances to move up in the division as they lost 4-2 to the lowly Rangers while the Predators beat the Penguins.
The Blues struck 1st with a little over five minutes left in the 1st period on a goal from Vladimir Tarasenko, jamming the puck home from the side of the net. The key to the play was a good forecheck from Ryan O’Reilly and good recognition by Tarasenko to join the forecheck on the wall once he saw the Devils defender at risk of losing possession, allowing them to dig out the puck to Brayden Schenn. Schenn then gets the puck to Tarasenko to jam it home.
Less than a minute and a half later, Schenn decides to fly the zone as he assumes Colton Parayko will get the puck. He fails to recognize the hot pressure on Parayko and is therefore unable to help once Parayko overskates the puck. Things are complicated more when the Ranger forward’s skate clips the back of Parayko’s skate, sending him to the ice. It’s important to note that Parayko is already effectively out of the play as another Ranger is already scooping up the puck which is why I believe the referees didn’t call a penalty. Watch it here.
The Rangers would get the game winning goal less than six minutes into the 3rd period as Gunnarsson gets beat back into the zone and outworked on the boards. Watch it < a href=https://www.nhl.com/video/vesey-chips-home-rebound/t-300085336/c-67314303>here.
The Rangers would add an empty net goal. In the game, Gunnarsson was -2 with no shots in 13:24. Thomas was also -2 and only had one shot in 14:38. While the Blues did outshoot the Rangers 46-25, the quality scoring chances were not nearly that lopsided.
The Blues rebounded last night, beating the Devils 3-2 in the waning seconds of overtime. The Blues took the lead with about five minutes left in the 1st period on a great individual effort by Robert Thomas.
Speak of Allen, he played very strong in the 3-2 victory, stopping 25 of 27 with many of those being quality shots against. During the game, the Blues broadcast team mentioned how Allen seems to face more quality chances than Jordan Binnington, echoing what I have been saying about the team playing differently in front of each goalie.
This makes Allen’s 5th quality start in a row and eight of his last nine. He is only 4-2-3 in those starts as his goal support has been low.
With the Predators and Jets losing last night, the Blues find themselves two points back of both teams with a game in hand on the Predators and trailing the Jets in the ROW tiebreaker.
NHL Champions for Charity We’ve gotten some traction on the charity wager among the Central Division bloggers. One charity I’ll highlight is Meagan’s Walk http://meaganswalk.com from your Blackhawk’s Blogger Justin Lowe. Meagan’s Walk seeks to bring hope and awareness to cancerous brain tumors, the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children and young people.
It’s a great day for hockey.