ST. LOUIS — Remember how the 2009 Stanley Cup Final ended, with Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury flying across his crease to deny a pinching Nicklas Lidstrom in the dying seconds of a 2-1, Game 7 Penguins win?
The great Lidstrom always scored on that play, coming in from his familiar left point, didn’t he? Those Detroit Red Wings never lost a big game at The Joe, having won four of the previous 11 Stanley Cups awarded. Or so we thought.
Those Red Wings had that same aura in 2009 that the Blackhawks have today.
“If you’re not here (in the Wings room),” goalie Chris Osgood assured me prior to that ’09 game, “you don’t know what it’s like.”
Well, all that winning history couldn’t steer the champagne cart to Detroit’s locker room that night, just as St. Louis Blues coach Ken Hitchcock saw another Hall of Fame defenceman somehow fail to deliver when Hitchcock was behind the Dallas Stars’ bench back in 2000.
“The visual sticks with me every time I go to Colorado,” Hitchcock said Sunday in St. Louis, when asked for his most prominent Game 7 memory. “There’s 13 seconds left, Ray Bourque’s got the puck at the point and he’s got a wrist shot going from the right side, which we all know usually goes in. It’s going in the net, and it hits the knob of Eddie (Belfour’s) stick and goes out of play. We could see it perfect from the bench, it’s a goal, and it would have tied the game … and it ends up putting us to the Stanley Cup finals.
“So, I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen how close it is.”
That’s where we are in this Central Division semi-final. Chicago’s history of winning these big games, versus St. Louis’ history of losing them.
If it were only about history, however, the Vancouver Canucks would have lost that Game 7 at home to the Blackhawks in the first round back in 2011, after Chicago had dusted Vancouver in six games in each of the previous two springs.
Just the other night, the San Joe Sharks blew a 3-0 lead to the Los Angeles Kings, and all us experts sitting around Mother Hubbard’s sports bar in Chicago knew what the Sharks were doing next: sitting tied in their dressing room after 40 minutes, quaking at that inevitable loss to L.A.
There was no way the choking Sharks were pulling this one off.
Yeah, the Sharks scored three in the third to close the series.
“We’re a new team,” the Blues’ Paul Stastny was saying on Sunday, during a lengthy quiz about St. Louis’ history of coming up small in big games. “We’re not what we were the last couple of years, or last year. We have a different feeling in here. Within the locker room we have the belief that we’re mentally tougher than we were in the past.
“We’re excited for the opportunity. We’ll be ready.”
We won’t bore you with all the details, but somewhere between losing to the Minnesota Wild in Round 1 last year, and a 25-year playoff run between 1979 and 2004 that resulted in just 15 playoff series won by St. Louis, the Blues are an aptly-named Factory of Sadness here in the Midwest.
History tells us that the Blues lose when they should win, they lose when they shouldn’t win, and the one thing we know for sure is, they’ll lose when the opponent is Chicago — who is supposed to win. Right?
“How do you make sure that this franchise’s history doesn’t affect Monday’s Game 7?” winger Troy Brouwer was asked.
“You guys stop talking about it,” he said.
“The thing that is so difficult and sometimes people don’t realize,” Brouwer continued, “is that there’s only one champion. Unless you’re that champion, you’re always going to be looked at as not quite getting there. We want to change that in our dressing room, for our franchise. We want to be the champions. It starts (Monday) night as winning a game and hopefully moving on to the next series.”
This is the seventh Game 7 of Brouwer’s career. So he should have some valuable intel to impart, right? Well, his record thus far is 2-4.
“Not the greatest record,” he copped.
Personally, my pick before this series began was Blues in seven — so I guess I’ve got St. Louis. Anyone who saw what Chicago brought in Game 6 would be dubious, and that is more than fair.
For me, it comes down to this quote by Brent Seabrook, a three-time Stanley Cup winner: “Big guys step up in big moments, and I think we’ve got a lot of guys that are looking forward to getting out there and playing tomorrow night.”
I know Seabrook is correct, and like you, I wonder: Do the Blues have enough of those players?
Until they show themselves, we’ll always wonder.
