Antoine Roussel was called for interference and David Backes scored on the ensuing power play.
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“The thing that impressed me the most was the way we played in OT”. Ruff said that both were progressing, but neither would travel with the team to St. Louis. “We made really good adjustments in the last series and we’ve got to make them again”.
The Blues are back in St. Louis preparing for Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinal against Dallas on Tuesday night.
Dallas got on the board early, a Goligoski rocket from the left faceoff dot over Brian Elliott’s glove at 3:36, but the Stars were making sloppy mistakes throughout the period, and the least effective player on the ice was the winning goaltender of Game 1.
Roussel said he didn’t know if the referees made the right call against him. “It’s not easy to be a ref out there”. The Blues managed to average 2.67 goals per game (GPG) against Dallas at home this year, and have limited the high octane Stars offense to just 1 GPG.
The Blues’ three first-period goals came on just five shots against Kari Lehtonen. But Niemi stopped three shots in that two-minute span. Niemi doesn’t even have to do that much work in the third, because the Stars were trying to hard to tie it up that they gave the Blues two shots on goal.
Vladimir Tarasenko took a slap shot that defenseman Alex Goligoski blocked. Steen hammered a shot at Niemi who was equal to the challenge, but the puck fell kindly to Blues captain David Backes who swept home the rebound and ended the contest.
Backes joined Pierre Turgeon (1999) as the only Blues players with two overtime goals in the same postseason, having scored the OT victor in the opener of the Blues’ first-round series against Chicago.
In San Jose, Joel Ward’s tiebreaking goal at 11:49 of the third enabled the Sharks to rally for a 5-2 win over the Nashville Predators. San Jose won the most road games in the National Hockey League this season and all three in Los Angeles in the first round.
Blues defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk had tied it at 1-1 with 8:28 left in the third period with a shot from the top of the left circle after Dallas failed to clear the puck out of the zone.
“Ours showed up early in the game, Nashville’s showed up later in the game (the Preds lost the lead, and the game, in San Jose)”. But Pavelski batted the rebound in for his sixth goal of the playoffs to give the Sharks the lead.
Logan Couture added a power-play goal and Joe Thornton scored an empty-netter.
While the Blues have been resilient enough this season that no game besides an elimination contest can really be considered a “must-win”, tying the series will be extremely important in Game 2. His first came from behind the net in Game 2 of the first-round series against Minnesota on a puck that ricocheted off a teammate’s skate and then hit Roussel’s, popping over the net and into the back of the goalie’s head before falling into the net….
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Lehtonen loomed large in the Dallas crease, however, and Radek Faksa untied the game just under four minutes later.
