Mark Scheifele scored the winning goal in the fourth round of the shootout, while Connor Hellebuyck stopped all four shooters as the Winnipeg Jets beat the St. Louis Blues 2-1 at Scottrade Center. Hellebuyck made a beautiful save off Vladimir Tarasenko, holding his left pad on the goal line to help push it to an extra round, where Scheifele fired a shot just under the bar for his first-career goal in the skills competition. The best chance of the first period came from the snake-bitten David Backes, who intercepted a pass up the middle and took two strides in alone, but Hellebuyck swallowed it up with the glove. Blues goalie Brian Elliott was equally good at the other end, with a dazzling glove stop off Blake Wheeler standing up as his best in the opening 20, but a mistake of his proved costly just 15 minutes into the middle frame. Elliott bobbled a towering pop fly from Dustin Byfuglien, dropping it in the blue paint, allowing Bryan Little to swoop in and pounce. No. 18 made no mistake, golfing it upstairs for the opening goal. It was a short-lived lead, however, as the Blues tied it up on the power play at 2:27. With Ben Chiarot in the box for delay of game (puck over the glass), rookie defenceman Colton Parayko blasted a high, hard shot from the centre point, beating a screened Hellebuyck blocker side. The Jets came close to taking the lead in the dying minutes of regulation as Tyler Myers banked a long shot off the shoulder of Andrew Ladd, but it richocheted off the bar and stayed out after a dance on the goal line.
The Blues' offense has been slumping for some time, and while fatigue was mentioned as a factor before the All-Star break, the effort was rarely in question. That wasn't the case in the shootout loss to Winnipeg, in which the Blues managed just 22 shots on goal and came up with their only goal on the power play. Even when the rules gave the Blues the puck, in the shootout, they couldn't do anything with it. Two of their four shooters, Alexander Steen and Jori Lehtera, never even got their shots off. Brian Elliott stopped Winnipeg's first three tries, but on the fourth, the Jets' Mark Scheifele put the puck past him for the Jets' first victory over the Blues in four tries this season. On a night when the organization celebrated its 50th anniversary of being brought into the NHL as an expansion franchise, a crowd of 18,323 saw the Blues wrap up their three-game homestand with a record of 1-2. They will head to the Sunshine State for two against Florida and Tampa Bay beginning on Thursday.
The Blues have scored five goals in their past two games and four have been on the man-advantage. They had another Tuesday, after Winnipeg opened the scoring early in the second period. In their first game without injured defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, shouldering Kevin Shattenkirk with 27:54 of ice time, the Blues fell behind 1-0 just 15 seconds into the period. Shattenkirk fanned on a chance to clear the puck from the defensive zone. Dustin Byfuglien then put a shot on net that deflected off Shattenkirk's stick and popped in the air towards Elliott. The netminder camped under the puck like an outfielder waiting on a flyball, but after getting a glove on it, it dropped in the crease and lay free. Bryan Little and Steen were the closest the puck. Steen seemed unaware of its whereabouts, allowing Little to pump it past Elliott for his 16th goal this season. The Blues answered with a power-play goal by defenseman Colton Parayko.
Late in the team's man-advantage, Jori Lehtera dropped a pass back to the point for Parayko, who teed one of his blistering slap shots. It sailed through goalie Connor Hellebuyck for the rookie's seventh goal of the season and first in 21 games. The Blues' power play, which had gone 24 consecutive chances without a goal, had its fourth goal on its last eight opportunities. Meanwhile, their penalty-killing unit snuffed out all five Winnipeg power plays Tuesday.
But while special teams have offered their support lately, the Blues' even-strength offense has not pulled its own weight.
Blues Quotes
Ken Hitchcock: "I don't think we competed in the offensive zone at all. We didn't compete for the puck. Our goalie was our best player again, played great. We didn't compete for the puck in the offensive zone. Pretty simple. Lots of opportunities to do it and when you don't have the puck you can't score. We didn't have the puck. Pretty simple.""The puck is part of the game. There's a reason you score goals five on five. There's a reason you create multiple chances. You have to work, you have to compete when you have the puck and not be discouraged because you're getting checked. There's a reason why we're scoring just one goal. Pretty simple. We've needed the power play the last two games, thank God, but we just don't, we don't compete when we get checked in the scoring areas near as hard as we have to."
"It's up to us to fix it. Pretty simple fix, quite frankly. We all talk about line combinations and chemistry - you've got to play harder than this. A lot harder than this. You've got to compete at a lot higher level than this, bottom line."
Brian Elliott: "It was spinning up in the air and you kind of lose it up in the lights and stuff. No excuses; they capitalized on it. It's frustrating that that's the one they get ..."
Colton Parayko: "I had an open lane right down the middle. Can't really pass up those opportunities on the power play."
Kevin Shattenkirk: "We just need to find ways to create more offense. I think that's just something we have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how we're going to do that. It's little things, it's details, it's getting pucks in, good passes, it's getting out of our defensive zone clean, which we didn't do tonight. I think that falls on us. Game planning, that's something we'll talk about as a team with the coaches and try to figure something else out."
Jets Quotes
Paul Maurice: “The on-ice product the last two games, for me, is a function of preparation. Every team has to find its soul, and how it gets itself ready. We’ve been right there the last two games, as good as we’ve been all year, where you’re wired into the game and ready to go. That’s a big deal. We’re back skating, we’re competing on pucks. We’re battling and when it all goes bad, we’re getting a block or a save.”Mark Scheifele: “Seriously, eh? [how it felt scoring the winner with his father in attendance] I’ve only shot three times in [the past] three years. The biggest thing is that I knew what to do. I’ve done it a lot in junior and in practice, too. You know what you can do and I was happy to do it. I picked my spot going in. I saw it as soon as I started skating down.”
Connor Hellebuyck: “It only takes one to get used to it. I was mad after the last one (Dallas) that we lost because I thought I was pretty good at shootouts. I thought we played well. I thought we were getting some good chances early on and then as the game progressed, we were both playing our styles and shutting each other down. Didn’t surprise me that it went to OT, and it was a pretty exciting overtime, too.”
Brian Little: “It was a pretty hard-fought game. It was one of those nights that had you had to battle for everything that we got. … I thought we did a great job defensively, taking away their opportunities. You had the feeling within the first few minutes that it was going to be a tight game like that. We had the right mentality. We didn’t take many chances; we waited for (them). It feels good to get two wins (on the trip).”
Other Results
Los Angeles @ Boston 9-2
Florida @ Buffalo 7-4
Anaheim @ Philadelphia 4-1
NY Islanders @ Columbus 3-2 SO
Tampa Bay @ Montreal 2-4
Washington @ Nashville 5-3
Edmonton @ New Jersey 1-2
Vancouver @ Colorado 3-1
Toronto @ Calgary 3-4
Los Angeles @ Boston 9-2
Florida @ Buffalo 7-4
Anaheim @ Philadelphia 4-1
NY Islanders @ Columbus 3-2 SO
Tampa Bay @ Montreal 2-4
Washington @ Nashville 5-3
Edmonton @ New Jersey 1-2
Vancouver @ Colorado 3-1
Toronto @ Calgary 3-4
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