Lindy Ruff knows a thing or one thousand about what a fiercely competitive goalie that Ryan Miller is. The two men spend a decade together in Buffalo and know one another very well. On Tuesday night in St. Louis, Miller and Ruff reunited. The old coach and his young Stars got the better of the veteran net minder whose team entered the game is possession of first place overall in the NHL. Miller made 27 saves and lost for the first time in five starts since being acquired from the Buffalo Sabres on Feb. 28.
Sochi Olympics hero Jamie Benn ended the Miller~Ruff reunion with a pretty OT GWG that snapped Miler’s four game winning streak and snapped the Blues’ five game win streak.
"I came across. I just went from a down position covering the more obvious play and it just leaves you a little more out of position for those cross passes," Miller said of the game-winner. "I kind of knew [Benn] got lost up there, but no one was on the backside the way the play developed. Just didn't get my whole body over in time."
Thanks, Blues TV
The OT loss didn't hurt the Blues by any means. A point is a point, no matter how you earn it. The Blues (44-14-7)now have 95 points, two more than the Anaheim Ducks in the race for the Presidents' Trophy. St. Louis leads the Pittsburgh Penguins, the top team in the Eastern Conference, by three points.
Lindy Ruff praised his veteran players for re-focusing the Stars for the Blues game in the wake of the terrifying cardiac incident that caused their teammate Rich Peverley to collapse on the bench and to be hospitalized the night before.
Ruff: “I told them that you can look for a reason to lose or you can find a way to win. And I said we need to find a way to win, and we need to win it for a couple of our teammates,… said Ruff. “We had good focus before the game. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about St. Louis. We just talked about how we wanted to play.…
Thanks, Stars.com
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