Blues Murder State of Minnesota, Take Commanding 3-0 Series Lead Over Wild

Look, if you’re Minnesota I don’t know what you do now. I don’t mean the hockey team I mean the state. If you’re the state of Minnesota, and you’ve been brutally, viciously, heartbreakingly murdered by the St. Louis Blues, what do you do now? All Minnesota has is hockey. Hockey and lakes. That’s it. Do they have to secede from the Union when they get swept Wednesday night?

I think so. Anyways, onto the action.

Blues returned home for game 3 leading 2-0 after an overtime win in game 1 and what might as well have been an overtime win in game 2 (Schwartz scored with about 2 minutes left in the third). And they wasted little time getting things going today.

This just 3 minutes in.

There was a lot of concern about Shatty’s void heading into this postseason, but Parayko is making up for it in spades. Kid is such a force.

Minnesota battled back to tie it in the second, but shortly after Jaden Schwartz notched his second GWG in as many games.

Minnesota was BUZZING in the third, but Allen stood tall and the Blues eventually added an ENG to take it down 3-1.

Allen racked up a cool 40 more saves. Guy is on fire — he’s now got 114 saves and just 3 goals against through 3 games. A .974 save percentage. FIRE.

The crazy part of all this? The Blues aren’t even playing that great. Yeah they’ve had a few strong periods, they’ve shown stretches of intense pressure, but for the most part they haven’t brought anywhere near their best. They’e been outshot every game yet lead 3-0. It’s amazing. Championship teams find ways to win and that’s all they’ve done thus far. I love it.

3 games in, 3 games up. Closing this thing out in 4 would be a MUCH welcome contrast to last year, when the Notes were pushed to 7 games in both the first and second rounds. That took a serious toll on the lineup; they looked beat up against San Jose in the conference final.

Important fact of the day: Blues have never lost since I touched the Cup.

Second important fact of the day: Wild didn’t stand a chance when the Tarasenkos started things off like this. Not a care in the world, casual family Easter at Scottrade.

See ya Wednesday for the final nail in Minnesota’s coffin. #lgb