St. Louis craved another home playoff game—clearly, the Blues were ready, too

ST. LOUIS — St. Louis was ready to see a local team host a playoff game.

The energy inside Enterprise Center matched that of the hockey team that calls the building home as the St. Louis Blues were, clearly, ready to play in one.

Even before the player introductions on Thursday night, the vibes seemed to rival what it felt like inside these walls in 2019 as the Blues played beyond spring and into the summertime that year. Perhaps that’s recency bias talking, but Blues fans were drawing those comparisons.

When the puck dropped on St. Louis’ first home playoff game in three years—the city’s first home playoff game for a team from a ‘Big Four’ professional sports league since the brief Cardinals-Phillies series in October 2022—it’s like the Blues were shot out of a cannon.

“I said to the staff before we went out, I said, you know? When you're on the road, you hear the crowd at the beginning. Puck drops, you don't hear the crowd,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery explained. “But when you're at home, it seems like it just gives you more juice. It just does.

“Our crowd was great to start the game, and right away, the ‘Let's go Blues’ in the first five minutes. I know we scored two goals, but it gives our players juice. You can tell we were really skating.”

Though they didn’t keep quite the same relentless energy for the full 60 minutes, the Blues raced out of the gates and then weathered the inevitable second-period storm that followed before giving the Towel Man one helluva workout in the third.

Pavel Buchnevich finished with a hat trick as the Blues became the first team all season to tag vaunted Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck for six goals as St. Louis got on the board in the series with a 7-2 win in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs series on Thursday night in downtown St. Louis.

The Blues’ dominance alerted the Winnipeg Jets that advancing out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs is no foregone conclusion.

Calling air traffic control, we’ve got a series on our hands.

Riding the raucous energy of the home crowd, it took all of 48 seconds for Buchnevich to break through with an early tally after the Blues went to work immediately in the offensive zone.

It was far from the last time we would hear from Buchy on the night.

A Blues power play came 70 seconds after the opening goal—and with it, another goal for Buchnevich, who brilliantly tipped a Robert Thomas laser past Hellebuyck for the Blues’ second goal. 

From there, the Blues maintained pressure in the period but there was this sense that a two-goal lead wasn’t safe—the Jets would push, eventually, and when it happened, it sure would feel better if the Blues had a little more cushion to work with.

Cam Fowler agreed. With just over four minutes to play in the period, he held the puck behind the St. Louis net while his teammates set things up in front of him. A pass to Colton Parayko started Fowler’s mad dash coast-to-coast down the ice, where he ended up with the puck returned to his stick after it had touched three others along the way.

Fowler beat Hellebuyck to cement the Blues 3-0 lead at the first intermission. The 33-year-old defenseman who began this season with the Ducks added four assists to his first-period goal on Thursday, becoming the first Blues d-man to record five points in a single playoff game.

“He’s been remarkable,” Montgomery said. “I told him after the game, thank God you’re not in Anaheim anymore.”

With the way the Blues were skating and hitting in the opening stanza, it was clearly emphasized by Jim Montgomery to finish plays and leave nothing to chance on the ice.

“The first period of this game was very similar to the first period in Winnipeg, of Game 1,” Montgomery said. “I thought that we were on our toes, moving North and finishing checks. I thought we finished a lot of heavy checks. Kinda wish we were playing in two nights, that’s where the benefit comes. But we’ll regroup and get ready for Sunday at noon.”

Whether the blistering pace could be maintained was a reasonable question after the inspired way the Blues navigated the first frame. 

The early stages of the second period seemed to acknowledge that the task would be difficult. The Blues didn’t have the same zip that we’d seen to establish the three-goal lead—but then again, the game inherently changes when you’re up three goals compared to when you’re scrapping for everything to build up that type of lead.

Weathering the storm in a defensive period felt like the inevitable calling—the Blues answered it.

A tripping penalty against Winnipeg around six minutes into the period came at a good time to reset the proceedings as the Jets had seen far more consistent puck possession to open the second period. But 12 seconds after the Blues’ power play began, Robert Thomas went to the penalty box for a questionable hooking call to negate the man advantage. 

Another hooking call came with 10:29 to go in the period, representing Winnipeg’s first real opportunity on the power play. With the Jets on the attack, a sprawling glove save by Jordan Binnington sent a jolt into the arena—until the play went under review to determine whether the puck had actually crossed the line in his glove.

The review took long enough that the nature of its duration arguably should have been used as a determining factor in the decision—if it takes you that long and you still can’t tell, you probably have to stick with the call on the ice, right?

Sounds simplistic, but that’s what happened. Video evidence might have shown 91% of that puck over the red line, but to say definitively that the entire puck had crossed it? The refs couldn’t, so they didn’t.

After the upheld review, the Blues killed off the rest of the penalty before smothering another one later in the period. The PK was called upon for a third time in the period toward the tail end of the frame, managing to get to intermission with the 3-0 lead still intact.

The best power play in the league came up empty in the second, and while Montgomery didn’t necessarily agree with the ‘weather the storm’ analogy, he identified pretty plainly the reason the Blues were able to escape Winnipeg's push unscathed.

“I wouldn’t call it a storm but I would call it that we have a great playoff goalie, a proven playoff goalie who makes great timely saves,” Montgomery said. “That allowed us to maintain that 3-0 lead. They did push but I thought we protected the net front really well.

“They’re going to get their chances, they’re a good offensive hockey team. But I thought that we limited those, even in the second when we weren’t as good as we were at first.”

The floodgates eventually opened in the third, leading to a chippy style of play as the Jets saw their Game 3 hopes—and perhaps their vice grip on the series—slipping away. Third-period goals by Jordan Kyrou, Alexey Toropchenko and Colton Parayko iced the cake. Robert Thomas chipped in four assists in the game.

The Blues did have to navigate momentarily the intensity of the game tightening up after Winnipeg scored a goal early in the third period to cut the lead to 3-1, but it was less than a minute later that Thomas picked Hellebuyck’s pocket behind the net, leading to Buchnevich's third goal of the game into a vacated net as the hats came raining down.

In true 'Hockey Guy' fashion, Buchnevich declined to bask in the glow of his hat trick when asked about it by reporters, deferring to the team’s accomplishment of climbing back into the series by virtue of Thursday’s win.

His teammates, though, were willing to heap a little more praise upon Buchnevich for his significant individual accomplishment.

“Obviously a special moment and one that you can take in,” Binnington said while seated beside Buchnevich at the postgame podium. “The crowd was loving Buchy here. The hats, there's a lot of hats out there. It was just such a great atmosphere. You see the true fans we have in times like these. They understand the game. They understand we're putting in the efforts. Then when you have success like that, it's great to appreciate that.”

But even when heaping his praises on a teammate, Binnington ended on a note that clarified the greater goals still in mind.

“And like he said, it’s just, get back to work after that.”