ST. LOUIS — Not long after he was promoted in November to replace fired head coach Mike Yeo, Craig Berube went into the St. Blues’ dressing room and removed the standings wall chart.
On Jan. 3, it would have shown the Blues last among the National Hockey League’s 31 teams.
On Tuesday, Berube wouldn’t say exactly who did the interior decorating and removed the daily reminder about how horrible the Blues were in the first half of the season, only that the standings chart had a “negative effect” on players he was trying to keep in the fight.
“Honestly, I didn’t think too much about it at the time,” defenceman Joel Edmundson said. “I was just sick of seeing us at the bottom.”
Centre Ryan O’Reilly recalled: “I remember liking that it was gone. The standings board, there’s so much stuff you can’t control. All that really matters is the next game.”
The Blues’ next game will open the Stanley Cup Final against the Boston Bruins.
The former 31st-place team continued its comeback for the ages on Tuesday night, eliminating the San Jose Sharks with a 5-1 victory that ended the Western Conference Final in six games. It may also have ended San Jose icon Joe Thornton’s NHL career.
St. Louis is going to the final for the first time since 1970, which was three years after the franchise was one of the first six teams added to the NHL’s original six. The Blues have never won a Stanley Cup.
The Blues crushed the Sharks 5-0 Sunday in San Jose, and the Sharks were still on the canvas when Game 6 began. San Jose stars Erik Karlsson, Joe Pavelski and Tomas Hertl, all injured or re-injured on Sunday, were unable to play in their team’s final game.
And only 92 seconds after the faceoff, the Blues opened scoring when the Sharks were caught puck-watching after a failed two-on-one for St. Louis. Nobody was checking Sammy Blais near the back post, and the Blue’s uncontested shot ticked teammate David Perron on its way past San Jose goalie Martin Jones.
Any hope that Jones might “steal” the Sharks the game, as he did during a 58-save masterpiece on the road in Game 6 of the Sharks’ first-round win against the Vegas Golden Knights, evaporated at 16:16 when the goalie allowed Vladimir Tarasenko’s power-play wrist shot to go in off his shoulder, short side, from the left wing circle.
When Dylan Gambrell, one of the players airlifted into the San Jose lineup, snatched a goal back at 6:40 of the second period with a beautifully-placed shot on a breakaway, St. Louis responded almost immediately. Brayden Schenn gathered the rebound from Alex Pietrangelo’s point shot and bounced the puck in to make it 3-1 on another Blues’ power play at 12:40.
The Blues added another goal at 13:05 of the third period when Tyler Bozak’s centring pass on an outnumbered rush was accidentally steered into his own net by Shark back-checker Gustav Nyquist.
Nyquist was the Sharks’ big pickup at the NHL trade deadline in February. They added Karlsson in a blockbuster before the season began. But it didn’t really matter to the Blues who was in the other lineup on Tuesday.
After Bozak’s goal, the crowd finally began chanting: “We want the Cup! We want the Cup!”
Then Ivan Barbashev scored into an empty net.
The Blues went 28-8-5 in the second half of the season. In the playoffs, they’ve beaten the Winnipeg Jets, Dallas Stars and Sharks. They don’t need a standings chart. They know exactly where they are.
Four more wins puts them on top of the world.
from Sports - Sports Canada - Google News https://sprtsnt.ca/2Hw2rY9
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May 22, 2019 at 09:50AM
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