The significance of defeating the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena cannot be overstated. During the regular season, the Avs racked up 68 of a possible 82 points at home, tied for the NHL’s best with the Florida Panthers.
Throw in postseason games, and the Avalanche were 35-5-4 at Stan Kroenke’s ice rink entering Game 2 of the second-round series with the Blues on Thursday. That’s a points percentage of .841.
Home or away, preseason or postseason, the Blues had won only four of their previous 16 games against Colorado, dating back to the start of the 2020-21 season. But they got it done Thursday with an impressive 4-1 victory.
Which begs the question: Now that they’ve slain the dragon once, can the Blues replicate that performance?
“Get some rest tonight, and get some rest tomorrow,” coach Craig Berube said late Thursday night at Ball, mere minutes after the victory. “Just prepare for another battle. You look at tape, and you go over things. Maybe there’s some things that you can expose a little better.”
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It was a typical Berube answer in the sense that he never overcomplicates things.
“But again, it’s playoff hockey,” he continued. “It’s gonna come down to competing at a high level, winning battles, making sure you’re playing with good structure.
“Every guy that’s dressed needs to be at his best. That’s what we got (Thursday). Every guy was at his best in my opinion. It’s about the team. That was a great team win.”
Which was in stark contrast to Tuesday’s 3-2 overtime loss in Game 1.
“It's the playoffs for you right there,” said David Perron, one of the Game 2 heroes with two goals. “Big roller-coaster. Obviously we didn't feel good about ourselves last game. We probably had two or three players have a good game — that was it.
“We had a lot more guys (Thursday). It was important to find a way to win one here on the road just like we did last time against Minnesota. We've got to keep pushing forward here.”
The Avalanche are still very good on the road, but not overwhelming. During the regular season, they were 24-14-3, for 51 points. Which was one point less than the Blues’ road record of 23-12-6, for 52 points. So perhaps the Blues can keep it rolling with the next two games at Enterprise Center, starting with Saturday’s 7 p.m. contest.
Hockey, especially playoff hockey, begins and ends with goaltending. And if the Blues continue to get the kind of play they’ve gotten from Jordan Binnington, well, they’re going to be a very tough out.
Based on his struggles during the regular series, Binnington’s postseason resurgence defies logic.
Among goalies with at least 25 appearances, Binnington ranked 49th in goals-against average (3.13) and 39th in save percentage (.901) during the regular season.
In the playoffs, he ranks first in goals-against (1.75) and second in save percentage (.948) among goalies who have appeared in more than one game.
Granted it’s only five postseason games so far, but Binnington isn’t just playing at his 2019 playoff level, he’s playing better than that level.
Another thing that stands out about the Blues’ performance in the first two games of this series is their work against the Colorado big four of Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog and Cale Makar.
In last season’s four-game playoff sweep of the Blues, Colorado’s big four combined for 10 goals and 17 assists. Through two games this series, they’ve combined for one goal and six assists. Makar, a frontrunner for the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman, is without a point in two games.
Obviously, the group is talented enough to break out at any moment, but if the Blues can limit them like that over the course of a series, they have a chance to spring an upset.
“Our D-corps was really good,” Berube said after Game 2. “They were up in the play. They carried the puck out of our zone. They were up on the breakouts carrying pucks — (Justin) Faulk, (Nick) Leddy and (Colton) Parayko especially — they were up there all night.”
So far, the Blues have done more than survive on the blueline without the injured Torey Krug and Marco Scandella. Calle Rosen and Nikko Mikkola, who might not be playing if Krug and Scandella were available, have held their own.
And the forwards did their part defensively, much more in Game 2 than Game 1.
“From the get-go, it seemed like we got on our forecheck way more,” Perron said. “We made them defend. That definitely will slow them down a little bit, chipping away at their bodies so that they can't get the speed they want.”
Binnington’s work with the puck around the net was much more noticeable Thursday than it was in Game 1. Reminiscent of the Minnesota series, his puck play helped keep the Avalanche from establishing possession time, and occasionally jump-started the Blues’ offense by getting the puck out quickly.
In fact, a quick outlet pass by Binnington began the sequence that resulted in Jordan Kyrou’s second-period goal, which broke a scoreless tie.
“They were talking to me out there to kind throw it up (the ice), and we caught them on a change,” Binnington said. “It’s nice to have a breakout sometimes, and communication plays a big part in that.”
The Blues need more of the same to build off of Thursday’s win and gain confidence — confidence that Berube maintained despite his obvious disappointment with the way things went in Game 1.
“He's awesome,” Perron said of Berube. “After the game (Tuesday), even the feeling that I had in the meal room, just kind of everyone was still loose. And the next day, we come in and we watch video, we saw a lot of the things that we didn't do well and he was pretty vocal about it.
“Did a great job of bringing it to us and saying what he had to say and we responded.”
Three more responses are needed to move on.
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After impressive Game 2 win, can Blues do it again? - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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