Follow @stlgoalie Last night the Blues course corrected their west coast road trip, carrying play throughout most of the game, eventually defeating the Canucks 3-0. Full highlights can be seen here. Even though the Blues outshot the Canucks 37 to 14 after 2 periods, the Blues only enjoyed a 1-0 lead on Troy Brouwer's 15th goal thanks to a good setup from Robby Fabbri and an even better move from Paul Stastny to get Fabbri the puck. Brouwer almost added his 16th goal right before the end of the period but was about 0.2 seconds late.
The Blues finally pulled away with about 8 minutes left in the third with Vladimir Tarasenko's 100th goal. Do you guys think Tarasenko is glad that Schwartz is back? I think this suggests so. Speaking of Schwartz, he added a late empty net goal on an unselfish play from Paul Stastny with about 1 minute left in regulation. Perhaps Stastny learned from something from the unsuccessful play against the Stars.
Brian Elliott's return saw him continue where he left off, adding to his league leading save percentage, upping it to 93.1%. Unfortunately he didn't make up any ground on Ben Bishop's goals against average lead as both goalies posted a shutout.
Blues fans and management shouldn't get too excited about the game even though the Blues put up 50 shots. The Canucks were without almost half of their regular roster for the game and their defensive corps included Hutton, Pedan, Bartkowski, Biega, and Tryamkin. These aren't exactly household names outside of Vancouver and maybe not even there. Ryan Miller gave a solid effort in the loss stopping 47 of 49.
Notes from the Blues game: - Colton Parayko only played 17:31, almost a minute less than Joel Edmundson and 3 minutes of that was power play time. - Alex Pietrangelo played 27:07. I'd like to see his ice time around 22 to 24 minutes right now but Carl Gunnarsson likely impacted ice time allocation. - Carl Gunnarsson only played 13:53 but did play the entire game. It appears this was likely continued nagging injury and situational time management. - Tarasenko put 8 shots on net and the STL line combined for 14. - Fabbri, Brouwer and Stastny seemed to be clicking together, generating some good scoring chances and almost notching 2 goals. - Upshall had 5 shots on goal and a couple of good scoring chances in less than 10 minutes of play. - Daniel Sedin more than doubled up the shots of the next closest Canuck player with 7. Notes from around the league: - All 3 of the Central division's best teams have shutout their opponent in their last game. Add in the top 3 of the Pacific, and all 6 teams have only given up 2 goals combined in the last game. - The Bruins and Islanders have been faltering lately having lost 5 games in a row combined. Only 9 points separates 2nd place in the Eastern Conference from 9th and it's not that much because 9th has 2 games in hand on 2nd. - The 5 worst points per game teams are all Canadian though the Blue Jackets are also tied for 5th worst. Worse yet, all 7 Canadian teams are in bottom third (10 teams) in points per game. - The Vezina race is going to be crazy tight this year.
It's a great day for hockey.