Gloria! Big Daddy Vladi And The Blues Go Up 1-0 At Home
Gloria! Gloria! The sound is the sweetest music to my goddamn ears and here we are hearing it in late April. Beautiful. The Blues took a 1-0 series lead at home last night in what was somewhat of an odd game. After such a battle against Winnipeg, this felt like a timid pace compared to the violent, physical play of the last series. The Blues unsurprisingly weren’t as sharp as they were in Game 6 after a few days off but looked strong and did exactly what they needed to do. The Benn-Seguin-Radulov line had a few dangerous shifts where they pinned the Blues in the D-zone for a little bit but overall were kept from running wild by Parayko and Bouwmeester.
The other key to this series that came true last night was the Blues getting to potential Vezina winner Ben Bishop early and often. Right away, Robby Fabbri puts it right through the wickets and got the crowd very into it. This line is so important to the Blues success and that pass from Barbashev was cash money.
From there the Blues started upping the physicality on the Stars, especially this hit by Steen laying the WOOD on Cogliano
Big Dad Vlad going 5 hole on Bishop on the PP! Did not see that wrinkle coming but I absolutely love it.
That is what you have a guy like 91 for! To make plays when you’re in a rut, more on that later. After 2 it was looking good, but the pressure is on when you have a lead at home going into the third period. You just can’t lose a game in that scenario without it being a kick in the nuts.
Tarasenko making Heiskanen look like a 19 year old. Goddamn what a play. This move working means that they are going to have to respect him driving to the outside for the rest of the series, which will hopefully open up the possibility to cut across and let the laserbeam fly.
BIG DAD VLAD!!!!!
It was a little closer than it should have been at the end, with Benn putting the Stars within 1 with about 2 minutes left, the Blues held on and closed it out. Yes, you’d like to see them bury an empty netter early and not let it get this dicey, but this is playoff hockey against a very good Dallas team, you’re never going to get off without a fight.
Doesn’t matter how, it matters how many and the Blues got 1 last night. Now comes a huge Game 2 at home on Saturday.
Time to get Enterprise absolutely ROCKING!!!! LETS GO BLUES!!!