SAN JOSE — How far is it from the Crushed Can to Silicon Valley?
Almost as far as it is to get to 600 NHL games — and the Third Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs — for a pair of junior teammates who were each chosen, amazingly, as the 214th pick in consecutive National Hockey League drafts.
It took a dozen years, three NHL teams apiece, and more stitches, lost teeth and black eyes than you’d want to count, but Troy Brouwer and Kyle Brodziak — who played together on a line (with Tomas Fleischmann) for the Moose Jaw Warriors back in 2003-04 — made it.
Brodziak, the 93-point junior out of St. Paul, Alta., who has settled into a career as a fourth-line centre; and Brouwer, a Vancouver kid who was brought in to St. Louis to be a role model on a team that didn’t know how to win.
Each scored twice Saturday night against the San Jose Sharks, as the St. Louis Blues stormed back to even this series at two games apiece with a 6-3 win.
“We were on a line for a couple of years together (in Moose Jaw). We did a lot of really good things back then,” Brouwer said. “Coming here (from Washington) this year, I didn’t know a whole lot of guys on St. Louis. We hadn’t talked for eight, 10 years. You say hi to each other on the ice (during a game), but this year we’ve become really good friends.
“Our families are close, they go to the park all the time together. We sit beside each other on the plane, so we have a lot of time to talk and reminisce. Catch up,” he said.
“It’s been a great friendship. One we’ll have for a long time.”
This Game 4 was everything for St. Louis. The Blues had been dominated for as many as eight of the nine periods that had been played in this Western Conference Final, and it was time.
Time to swing the tide. Because if St. Louis was to lose another three periods to San Jose, well, they could say whatever they wanted. We’d have known they weren’t able to change the momentum. That the Sharks were simply better.
But moments after they’d run The Preakness in Baltimore, St. Louis flew out of the gates here in Northern California with two goals in the first period. They built a 4-0 lead in the second and chased the infallible Martin Jones from San Jose’s net for the first time in these playoffs. (This is now the first time where both Conference Final/NHL Semifinal series featured all eight goalies since 1980.)
“I thought we went back to our roots. What made us successful in the regular season and in playoffs,” Brouwer said. “We were able to create chances from below the goal line rather than off the rush.
“Collectively and individually, guys really brought a great game tonight.”
Head coach Ken Hitchcock put it on himself after Game 3 to figure out why San Jose was having such an easy time with their zone exits, and why St. Louis couldn’t find any traction in this series. He spent five hours in the film room on Friday.
This guy is a surely professional coach of the highest order, and he found the answers — but he still needed his delivery men.
He found them in two old Warriors, Brouwer and Brodziak, whose old junior rink was shaped like a saddle and known across the Western Hockey League as the Crushed Can. Hitchcock includes his two 214th overalls among those who form the “conscience of the team.”
“When you just got to step up and play with a higher level of emotion, you can’t just talk about it. You have to have people show you the way,” the coach said. “They’re very good players (who) know what the emotional level is. They’ve had experience, know another gear. They found it.”
Brouwer has been an amazing find for these Blues, coming from the Capitals where his experience never quite took, to lead St. Louis with a series-winner in Round One and now a pair of goals in this uber-crucial Game 4 at San Jose.
“I had a lot of expectations on me this year,” Brouwer said, “with what (GM Doug Armstrong) has expected from me when he traded for me. Telling me that my season was going to be judged on how I handled myself, and how I played in the playoffs and down the stretch.
“When you have expectations like that on you, you want to perform your best.”
St. Louis did not emerge unscathed, with captain David Backes and emerging winger Robby Fabrri both coming out of the game injured. But the series is squared, and that was the point of Saturday night for St. Louis.
As the Blues flew home Saturday night, a series back in control, Brouwer and Brodziak slipped into their usual seats next to each other on the team charter.
It used to be a Greyhound.
