An exciting overtime filled with fantastic saves and huge breakaways finally ended courtesy of Blues captain David Backes, who got his second career overtime victor in the playoffs.
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It was a tough battle in the second period with the Blues outhitting the Stars 15-6, continuing their bruising style. “It doesn’t matter if I like the call or don’t like the call”, Stars coach Lindy Ruff said after the game.
“You can’t use it as a crutch”. Just wait until the postseason when the checking gets tighter and the scores get lower, they said.
It was around this point that the Stars music guy Michael Gruber played “Holding Out for a Hero” during a stoppage in play and we on twitter asked ourselves, who would be street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds? It’s certainly a deflating feeling, especially considering Dallas fought their way back with a two-goal third period just to lose in the overtime. That drops the Stars to 4-for-26 on the power play in the playoffs and 1-for-20 at home.
“I don’t think it was our line’s best game, by any means”, Pavelski said.
Think about it. How many times have we come from behind to steal a win? The Stars were a runaway train coming through the neutral zone and their two goals came from bottom-six forwards Antoine Roussel and Radek Faksa. He is listed as day to day after getting hit on the foot with a shot by teammate Stephen Johns. “When a guy like me sees that, it goes a long way”. “We moved it too slow and some of our entries, we were just off. Sometimes we made some poor decisions”. “It looked like he was nearly there”.
The series is tied at one game apiece, with Game 3 scheduled for today in Pittsburgh. Eakin fired on net from the point and the rebound fell to a wide open Benn who slammed it past Elliott to send the game to overtime.
The Blues came into the first period of Game 2 knowing that they needed to get back to their style of hockey, after being outhit by Dallas in Game 1. All three losses have been at home. “Jaromir Jagr, in all his wisdom at 44, said, ‘Who cares who scores?’ That’s the way we feel in this room”. We had late-game drama. Blues goalie Brian Elliott had 31 saves. He also hit Minnesota’s Devan Dubnyk in the first round. It’s an element of our game that gave us an edge in the regular season and we need to get it back.
“I saw some of the effects of that the first two periods”, DeBoer said. “It just kind of caught me right in the eye”.
Instead it seems that when things start to fall apart the coaching staffs only solution is to facilitate what is already happening by shortening the shifts even more and allowing the same rotation of personal to keep doing what their doing. “It was right on my cheek bone, but it was all good after that”. But after Elliott’s broken facemask was repaired, he remained in the game. 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.
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But, fortunately for St. Louis, they got their intermission, hanging on in the final minutes of regulation.
