Somehow, at the end of a 70-minute-plus hockey game, the St. Louis Blues managed to synchronize effort and execution, and pulled a 4-3 overtime win out of the fire Sunday on David Backes’s power-play goal at 10:38 of overtime.
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Faksa – like Antoine Roussel did on his second-period goal on which Faksa had an assist – started the rush that led to his victor.
The best-of-seven series matching the West’s top two teams switches to St. Louis for Game 3 on Tuesday night.
St. Louis had a quick extra-man chance in overtime when John Klingberg was whistled for holding as Vladimir Tarasenko, who scored 40 goals in the regular season and four in the first-round series, was charging toward the net.
“That second one was tough – he was trying to stay onside”, Stars coach Lindy Ruff said.
But a goal with just under five minutes left by Radek Faksa, banging home Ales Hemsky’s rebound, allowed the Stars to escape with a 2-1 victory in a game that ought to have been decided much earlier.
Backes is here now, looking at a team around him that has a chance in a year when a couple of the usual Western suspects – Chicago, L.A. – are out, and the other Western series has a couple of long shots in Nashville and San Jose. His centring pass in OT of Game 1 of these playoffs banked into the Blackhawks net off defenceman Trevor van Riemsdyk, and on Sunday the rebound found his tape like iron shavings to a magnet. “To be able to come out of Game 1 with a win even though we didn’t play our best 60 minutes is good because we’ll be better in Game 2”. While the Stars will have to tone down the penalties through the rest of the series, the Blues have much more work to do.
“The game last night felt a lot like Game 6 (of the Chicago series), to be honest with you”. They outshot St. Louis 42-32 and that disparity doesn’t do justice to the Stars’ dominance. Nearly to the point where it bodes well for our opponent to spot us a couple goals to start the game and then sit back and watch us completely self destruct.
Antoine Roussel also scored for Dallas, while Kevin Shattenkirk scored for the St. Louis. San Jose won the most road games in the National Hockey League this season and all three in Los Angeles in the first round.
Eakin assisted on all three Dallas goals. Even though they dropped into a 3-1 hole after the first period, Dallas held the edge in shots and overall play through most of the game.
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.
Spezza and Benn had their shots before the game-turning penalty, and Backes’ third goal of the playoffs came 17 seconds into the power play.
St. Louis Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock recently joined the Afternoon Show with Tim Cowlishaw and Matt Mosley on 103.3 FM ESPN Radio to discuss the playoff series against the Dallas Stars and more.
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Pavelski has tallied a point in all but one game this postseason and scored a goal in five of seven postseason games. That’s why you will only see these videos during the Blues playoff run.
