Mark Spector, Sportsnet: “Cody Eakin had a plug up his left nostril, and a big, sloppy grin on his face”. However, the Blues have been a little better, and they have also shown that they can win at home and at a hostile crowd.
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That quote about sums up what you could aptly describe as an Oreo cookie of a second-round series.
Did Dallas give St. Louis the blues after Tuesday’s Game 3? The Stars had lost their first two overtime playoff contests, including the second game of this National Hockey League series. Game 5 in Dallas on Saturday afternoon ought to be fascinating.
On Cinco de Mayo, of course, the score added up to five: 3-2 for Dallas. No sitting back. No letting the Stars back into the game with overly cautious play.
Stars coach Lindy Ruff didn’t mince words when asked if a combination of the 6-1 drubbing and the Reaves shenanigans would ramp up his team’s emotions.
“That’s the nice thing about finishing first, we’ve got home court advantage back”, Eakin said. I thought Jamie Benn was great again, and I thought some young guys played really well. We always found ways to get it done. Captain David Backes redirected Shattenkirk’s big shot from the point into the Stars net.
What has become evident in this series is that Dallas wants to run and gun, scoring off the rush whenever possible. Instead, he played one of his best games of the playoffs, stopping 24 of the 26 Blues shots he faced, and a lot of them were pretty high quality chances. The Stars came out with the same steady pressure they had applied in the second and kept things level in the third period.
The Blues went 2-for-7 on the man advantage, including what was the game-winning goal.
St. Louis was not happy with its third period in Game Two but the club put forth a rather complete 60-minute effort last game. Just 69 seconds later, with Backes in the box, the Stars scored their first power-play goal of this series to take a 2-1 lead. “We didn’t bury them when we had the chances in the first period when we had all the odd-man rushes and breakaways”, Hitchcock said. We’ll see if they can get the same type of aggressiveness out of this group that they’ve gotten in the past two wins.
On Tuesday night, McKenzie abandoned the press box in favor of Dallas’ bench, making his Stanley Cup playoffs debut in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinal series. Troy Brouwer is one of them as he has competed in seven straight Game 7s, and effectively put away his former Chicago Blackhawks team last week.
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“The message was stay positive, get back at it. We know we’re a good team, we finished where we did because of the way we played throughout the year, and we believed in each other”. “We’re set up to be resilient and believe in our system”. This series has been one of the most exciting of the second round so far, and we could be in for three more treats like Thursday’s thriller now. He now has 11 points in the playoffs this season, which is only two behind the most ever for a Blues player in a postseason.
