Wild 2 – Blues 5 | Slightly more similar to 2019 squad

In his first start of this playoffs, Jordan Binnington played nervously in net for the St. Louis Blues on Sunday. He still allowed his team to level the series that opposes them to the Minnesota Wild (2-2) thanks to a 5-2 victory at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis.

Miguel Bujold
The Press

Binnington, who replaced Ville Husso, had lost all nine of his previous playoff starts. Staggering, he managed to stop 28 of the Wild’s 30 shots, even if it wasn’t very pretty overall.

The revelation of the 2018-2019 season was notably unable to control the puck on Matt Boldy’s goal, which reduced the Blues’ lead to a single goal, 3-2, in the third period. Binnington’s positional play in front of his cage also left something to be desired on a few occasions.

Although Marc-André Fleury allowed four goals – the Blues’ fifth having been scored in an empty net – it was thanks to him that the Wild kept their hopes of winning for most of the game. While Binnington was looking for his bearings, Fleury played with confidence after allowing only three goals in his two previous starts.

The other big contributor to the Wild’s wins in games two and three of the series was Kirill Kaprizov, who scored the game-winning goal in both games. It was this same Kaprizov who tied the game, 1-1, on Sunday, tying a team mark with a fifth goal in the same series. Since there will be at least two more games between the Blues and the Wild, the chances are good that he will succeed at least one or two more.

The Wild will likely need to continue to get strong performances from Kirill Kaprizov to be successful over the next few weeks, because on paper this team isn’t the most impressive.

Kaprizov, Boldy and Kevin Fiala form an interesting attacking core for the present and the future, and Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman and Joel Eriksson Ek are all coming off the best season of their careers. But this group pales in comparison to that of the Blues, at least in terms of depth.

Each of the nine forwards who make up the Blues’ top three lines has scored at least 20 goals this season. Their “big 3” in defense, consisting of Torey Krug, Justin Faulk and Colton Parayko, added 31 goals.

However, of this group of 12 players, only four scored in the first four games of the series: David Perron, Ryan O’Reilly, Jordan Kyrou and Vladimir Tarasenko. This was the case before the meeting on Sunday and it continued. Kyrou and Perron scored a brace each and O’Reilly scored into an empty net.

Perron had some good seasons when he was in his twenties, but he’s been a much better player since he was in his thirties. The Quebecer and O’Reilly complement each other perfectly, and it will be interesting to see if the Blues will be able to keep Perron in St. Louis, who could become a free agent this summer.

Perron and Kyrou scored 54 seconds apart to give the Blues a 3-1 lead in the second period, and that was essentially when the game was decided. Dominated 26-9 in shots on goal with 7:30 left in the second period and trailing 3-1, the Wild fought well for the rest of the game. game and had the 21-7 advantage on shots from that point.

A battered defense

Sooner or later, the Pavel Buchnevich, Brayden Schenn, Robert Thomas, Brandon Saad, Ivan Barbashev, Faulk and Parayko, who are all looking for their first goal of the playoffs, will have to contribute. Note that Krug is absent due to a lower body injury. Craig Berube said his absence could be long.

We notice the absence of Krug in numerical superiority, in particular, but the Blues have a young player with a similar style of play. It’s Scott Perunovich, a 2018 second-round pick, who played his first game since mid-January on Sunday.

Perunovich was recovering from a wrist injury and maybe that’s why he mostly stuck to distributing the puck when he played on the power play. His offensive talent is obvious, however, and his statistics confirm it: he totaled 105 points in 115 games with the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs, in the NCAA, then 22 in his first 17 games in the American League this season…

With Krug, Nick Leddy and Robert Bortuzzo all missing, Berube opted to use seven defensemen for Game 4 of the series. Montrealer Marco Scandella, however, left the game due to a lower-body injury that will further weaken a badly battered defense.

Tight, but not tight…

Most analysts expected the Blues-Wild series to be one of the tightest and most interesting in the first round. We do seem to be heading for a series that will end in seven games, but we certainly can’t say that the first four games have been very tight (one-way games have been abnormally numerous since the start of the tournament).

After a 4-0 opening win, the Blues suffered a 6-2, 5-1 beating. Sunday’s game was tighter, sure, but we felt the Blues would get the win pretty early in a game that didn’t put on a great show, let’s face it.

If either of these two teams faces the Colorado Avalanche in the second round, they will have to significantly raise their level of play in order to be strong.

It was believed that the Blues were the best equipped to give the Avalanche difficulties in a potential matchup. Because of their depth, their style of play and the fact that they have the experience of winning the Stanley Cup three years ago.

But counting the three-game qualifying round that preceded the playoff tournament two years ago, the Blues were 3-13 in the playoffs since winning in 2018-19 prior to their win on Sunday…

Will this win restore Binnington’s confidence? Will the many Blues scorers who are still looking for a first goal against the Wild start to hit the target again? We will know more after the fifth game of the series, Tuesday evening (9:30 p.m.) in Minnesota.