The Blues won their FIRST one goal game of the season last night, beating the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 in overtime. The game featured a number of good and bad things. Let’s start with the good.
Obviously getting their 1st one-goal victory is good. Other positives included the following:
- Vladimir Tararsenko scored for his third game in a row.
- Alexander Steen made a tremendous individual effort and was rewarded with a goal at the end of the 1st period.
- Pat Maroon had a strong game, contributing to a strong forecheck and a lot of offensive zone pressure.
- Robert Bortuzzo logging over 14 minutes in his first game back including almost 3 minutes of short-handed ice time.
- Joel Edmundson played over 24 minutes and contributed two assists, 2 hits and 2 blocks which allows you to overlook his 3 penalties.
- Colton Parayko played over 23 minutes and won the game single handedly in overtime.
- Alex Pietrangelo played one of his best games of the season before leaving the game.
- Stick tap to the coach Berube for putting two defensemen out in overtime on the game winning goal.
- Jake Allen was superb in the 3rd period and stopped over 93% of the shots he faced giving him his 6th quality start in a row (imho). Also, he made a critical save moving to his right shortly before Tarasenko’s goal.
Very subtle but excellent play by Edmundson allowing the puck to get to Tarasenko on his goal.
What a goal by Steen
Parayko wins the game
Now for the bad:
- It appears Steen may have been concussed on a hit from former Blue Erik Johnson.
- Pietrangelo also left injured and it didn’t look good. He is out tonight.
- The Blues blew yet another third period lead.
- David Perron had a terrible game with a neutral zone penalty, two giveaways and errors that directly led to both Avalanche goals.
- Robby Fabbri failed to generate much and only got 14 minutes of ice time even though Steen went down.
There is no rest for the wounded as the Blues will face the Arizona Coyotes tonight. The Coyotes have won two games in a row and are 4-5-1 in their last ten games while going 5-6-1 at home. The Coyotes are the 3rd worst scoring team in the league but are 5th best defensively. Their power play is 6th worst but their penalty kill is leading the league. Clayton Keller leads the team in points with 15 in 24 games.
Jordan Schmaltz and Robert Thomas will draw back into the lineup with the lines starting like this:
Thomas - O'Reilly - Tarasenko
Fabbri - Schenn - Perron
Maroon - Bozak - Blais
Sanford - Barbashev - Sundqvist
Edmundson - Parayko
Dunn - Bortuzzo
Bouwmeester - Schmaltz
Johnson
NHL Champions for Charity
We’ve gotten some traction on the charity wager among the Central Division bloggers. More on that to come.
It’s a great day for hockey.
St Louis Blues Blogger • 
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