ST. LOUIS – Special teams hasn’t been kind to the St. Louis Blues as of late, and quite frankly for that matter, all season long.
A chance to make amends was on the table against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions for the Blues, who were in search of some good vibes for a chance.
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Those good vibes came off the stick of Jimmy Snuggerud, who scored a power-play goal with nine seconds remaining to give the Blues a dramatic 5-4 win against the Florida Panthers at Enterprise Center on Thursday.
Snuggerud took a quick one-touch cross-seam pass from Pavel Buchnevich in the left circle and rifled a one-timer into the top of the net past Panthers goalie Daniil Tarasov to help the Blues (20-25-9) end a five-game losing skid (0-4-1).
“I think we were wearing them down in the zone for a bit, so some tired guys on the ice,” Snuggerud said. “‘Rouzy’ [Jordan Kyrou] and ‘Buchy’ made some great passes throughout the whole power play, but the last seam play there, I thought, ‘Just get it on the left side of the net,’ and fortunately enough it went in. It was a great play.”
Kyrou had a goal and two assists, and Justin Faulk and Buchnevich each had two assists for the Blues. Jake Neighbours, Oskar Sundqvist and Jonatan Berggren also scored for the Blues, who got 17 saves from Joel Hofer.
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“It’s great to be on this side of it,” Faulk said. “Tonight was a tough one. It was challenging, that’s for sure, down one, even and then giving up 4-2 and let them tie it up. So it was a push.
“We knew going into the third it wasn’t going to be any different; it was going to be a tough third period against these guys. They play a tough game. To get rewarded at the end is great, because we obviously had it go the other way here a couple times recently, but I think more importantly to get rewarded, we think we’re putting in a lot of work. We think guys are working hard. We don’t think we’re rolling over like the Dallas game, right, down three at the end of the second period, come back out, put in a good third and a good effort and not get the reward there. No one’s feeling sorry for us, but it obviously feels better when that does happen. You just know you’ve got to keep going and that stuff comes with that.”
Let’s look at the game observations:
* Special teams make a difference in the end – Here’s the bad: the Blues were really not good on the penalty kill early. It’s the fifth time the past seven games they had allowed multiple power-play goals when Sam Reinhart got one in the first period to tie the game 2-2 and Blues killer Matthew Tkachuk scored one late in the second period to erase a 4-2 Blues lead that tied it 4-4.
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It was time for that moment.
It arrived in the third period when Nick Bjugstad was whistled for a double-minor for high-sticking Evan Rodrigues, who was playing in his 600th NHL game.
Were the Blues going to buckle again or would the kill finally get a job done.
Not only did they kill the entirety of the four minutes but the Panthers, who are 22nd with the man advantage, didn’t get a single shot off.
“I feel like we were good from start to finish on that one,” Sundqvist said playing in his first game since Jan. 18 against the Edmonton Oilers. ‘I don’t think we gave them a lot. After we kill it off, you hear the crowd and it definitely gives you an extra boost. It was a good momentum swing for us.”
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The Blues wound up 5-for-7 on the penalty kill.
Blues coach Jim Montgomery said, “We had already given up two power-play goals, so the effort by our penalty killers was awesome. The response by our fans was awesome, and it gave us life.”
It carried forward, and the Blues, who are 29th on the PK, used it to their advantage with their 25th-ranked power play, which was initially a 4-on-3 for 40 seconds of coincidental minors when Hofer and Tkachuk got into a scrum behind the net, and former Blues defenseman Niko Mikkola was called for goalie interference with 1:54 to play.
It looked like the Blues were going to run out of time, and they didn’t throw pucks at the net as the fans were imploring them to do so. They patiently worked it around and that patience paid off this time when Kyrou, who had a one-timer blocked initially, seamed a pass to Buchnevich, who one-touched a cross seam pass to Snuggerud in the left circle and he did the rest:
It was a game filled with penalties with whistle-happy referees Liam Maaskant and Jake Brenk working the whistles into oblivion with 18 penalties totaling 44 minutes.
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“We haven’t had many like that,” Faulk said. “Most of our games are pretty low in the penalty department. We don’t get a ton of power plays, I don’t think we take a ton of penalties either. It’s definitely weird, not much flow to it there for a while, even down there to the end with the four-minute and then the penalty there on them. Good to come out with it, the last-minute goal on our end feels a lot better than on the other side. It was a good feeling here after that.
“… Even within the game tonight, we were frustrated with our special teams again, not getting it done on either side of it. We knew we had a chance to step up there in the third and mainly start with the penalty kill. Just get the kill, be aggressive, try and get some momentum off it, don’t let them take over the game right there. That was huge. I think we did get momentum and came up big at the right time.”
With 12 combined power plays, it was a hard game to get into any kind of rhythm.
“It’s crazy. We all felt like you were either on the power play or the penalty kill the whole game,” Sundqvist said. ‘Especially for guys that don’t play either power play or penalty kill, it’s hard. You’re sitting there and you can sit there for a 10-minute stretch. It’s super-hard for those guys. I think we did a great job at coming back and really playing well 5-on-5. I think was thinking on the bench there at the end of the second period, ‘I don’t think I’ve had a lot of shifts with my linemates 5-on-5.’ Definitely a crazy game but happy to pull out a win.”
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* First period turnaround – The Panthers, who had won three in a row on the road, are a team that when they get you pinned in the D-zone with success, it’s hard to get out. It was trending that way when Florida gained the territorial edge early on, and when A.J. Greer made it 1-0 3:12 into the game on a coverage mistake, it was a trend the Blues needed to get out of.
But then there were odd-man rushes, and with the ability to break out of the D-zone with pucks allowed the Blues to beat the aggressiveness of not only Florida’s forecheckers but their pinching defensemen.
That’s how Neighbours tied the game 1-1 at 4:46 on a puck from below the D-zone goal line to Kyrou, who one-touched a puck up that caromed off defenseman Gustav Forsling to Buchnevich, who hit Neighbours through the neutral zone for a breakaway, and he beat Tarasov high to the glove side:
And when Kyrou made it 2-1 at 7:51, it came off a sharp read by Philip Broberg, who intercepted Carter Verhaeghe’s cross-ice stretch pass in the neutral zone, worked his way down the left hand side before finding Kyrou in the left circle. His quick shot also the glove side found its way in:
And even at 4-on-4, Faulk used his strength to fend off a couple would-be Panthers players before shoveling a backhand pass to Berggren for a one-timer from the right circle at 14:27 to reclaim a lead at 3-2 in a wild opening 20 minutes:
“I thought that our wall play in the first period was really good,” Montgomery said. “When you play against Florida, they’re going to hem you in. If you win those wall battles and you’re off the wall, you can have odd-man rushes and we had a couple odd-man rushes that led to goals and we almost had another one at the end of the period. We had a 2-on-1 that was another play that if you can make them against them. It’s not easy because they’re the best in the league at doing it. You get odd-man rushes and then you’ve got to take advantage of those.”
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* Neighbours, Kyrou, Sundqvist were all game time decisions and scored – When Sundqvist scored 41 seconds into the second period, a goal Tarasov would certainly like back, to make it 4-2, it gave a goal to three players that Montgomery labeled game time decisions after the morning skate.
All three had skated, and it was a case of who would feel fine after it.
Well, Sundqvist said he knew on Wednesday he would be playing, to which Montgomery quipped, “’Sunny’ found his Guy Lafleur dipsy-doodle right through the middle and twisted wrister right into the corner, eh? How many times have you seen that from him.
“First of all, ‘Sunny’ should have told me (he knew he was playing Wednesday). That would have been nice. Glad he’s telling you guys that.
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“The other two, it was going to be how they felt this morning because it was very positive about how they responded the day after the game. We were very happy with how they were both feeling. I put it at 50/50 for both of them. It was great. As soon as they took the morning skate and I had already met with you guys, they came in and (said), ‘We’re playing. We’re players.’”
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