He wasn’t up to snuff in Game 3, yielding three goals on 12 shots before Lehtonen entered and allowed three more. “They had momentum for a lot of it, but we stuck with it, got some great saves, and towards the third we started getting some momentum, getting our feet going”.
Advertisement
They had suffered a rare blowout loss in the playoffs, they complained about a blown kiss from Blues enforcer Ryan Reaves and were dealing with a goaltending quagmire since neither Kari Lehtonen or Antti Niemi had seemingly found a way to lock down the starter’s job. Sharp had a tap-in for his first point of the series on a power play off an assist by Jamie Benn, giving the Stars two goals in 1:09 and the lead. “We’ve got to play our same style of game, put it out there and when we do that the chips fall on our side of the table more often than not”.
Both teams have enjoyed stretches of dominant play during the series. The game ended as Ruff wanted, but it did not start out that way.
“Any time you get a chance to clinch, it’s huge”, Elliott said.
Game 5 of the Western Conference Semifinal is schedule for Saturday at noon. “We know what kind of effort we’re going to need and we can’t take a step backwards in any facet of our game if we want to have success tonight”. He led the team in rebounding with just under six per game and was third in scoring at just under 12 points a contest.
Head coach Lindy Ruff has been aware of this, as he has opted for Travis Moen over Valeri Nichushkin in certain situations and he’s even played Curtis McKenzie, who was brought up with Brett Ritchie between Game 2 and Game 3.
The Blues, up 3-2 in a second-round series with the Central Division champion Stars, have an opportunity to eliminate the opposition and advance to the Conference Finals for the first time in 15 years. “When we do that we’re right where we need to be”.
Maybe. The Stars could also look at the remaining three games and take comfort in the fact that two of those will be in their home barn, where they’ve had a very good rate of success this season.
The Stars rebounded quite well, though, to outlast the Blues in overtime in Game 4 at Scottrade. While Benn has been consistent throughout the playoffs, Patrick Sharp recorded his first two points of the series on Thursday with his club’s first power-play goal versus the Blues before assisting on Cody Eakin’s overtime tally. He has had a tense rivalry with Blues’ captain David Backes dating back to last season. “There was a shift or two they came at us hard, rather than sitting back, we made the push back, got pucks deep, made wave on wave….” Hitchcock knows as much.
Game 4 teetered back and forth between the two styles, but St. Louis came out loose when Joel Edmundson handed a puck to Radek Faksa for a freebie to tie the game at 1. We didn’t play well last game.
Advertisement
St. Louis went up 1-0 when Fabbri sent what appeared to be a pass through the slot that ricocheted off Dallas forward Brett Ritchie’s skate past Lehtonen. I’m not going to sugar-coat it.
