DALLAS — For all the breaks that have broken them, all the times they were left to wonder how they could possibly play better and still lose, the St. Louis Blues‘ time may finally have arrived.
They have that look now. A swagger that the real good teams accrue over time, but something that has always flown over Missouri without touching down.
And they have a goalie. Lord, has this franchise never been able to pair up good skaters with a good enough goalie, over all these many seasons.
Brian Elliott is his name. He used to be a journeyman.
“He told us, ‘I’m going to make those big saves,’” began defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk after this 4-1 Game 5 victory. “He’s been doing it for us these entire playoffs and it’s been amazing.”
Okay, wait. Elliott actually tells you he’s going to make big saves? Like, right before he makes them?
“He tells us before the game that he’s got a couple big saves,” marveled Shattenkirk. “Just like we have guys making big plays out there, sparking a little energy, he does the same thing for us. That’s what he prides himself in. He makes them because he’s just following the puck so well. His head is so focused right now.”
This is how a mediocre franchise finally gets over the top. Because a been-around-the-block goaltender finally gets his game over the top, like Dwayne Roloson did in 2006 with Edmonton.
Elliott had a grand total of 17 playoff starts — and only six playoff wins — on his National Hockey League resume when this all began last month. Last season the Blues gave up in him entirely, giving their nets to backup Jake Allen.
This spring the 31-year-old Newmarket, Ont. native — who would have to buy a ticket to the Hall of Fame to get up close to the Vezina Trophy — has played every second of every Blues game. He is feeling it an entirely new level, stopping a one-timer and then a rebound from Cody Eakin with 16 minutes to play in a 3-1 game Saturday, the kind of save the Blues have simply never been granted at a moment like this.
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“You try to get over and get big, seal the ice and take care of any garbage left out in the front,” he said. “It was kind of a bang-bang play — didn’t have much room. Just tried to be big.”
Try to be big. That’s something the Blues have been saying to themselves for decades now, while rivals like Detroit and Chicago — even Dallas in 1999 — held their Stanley Cup parades.
“He was good,” shrugged head coach Ken Hitchcock, who has been absolutely diligent to mask any sense that Elliott has been a pleasant surprise. “You’re going to need your goalie on the road to win.”
To take a 3-2 series lead in a day game against hockey’s highest scoring team, that’s not all you’re going to need.
You need a hunch to pay off, like giving Dmitrij Jaskin his first playoff game of the spring and watching him score a beauty. Or have another Troy Brouwer butcher job from three feet out go in, the way it did on his Game 7 game-winner against Chicago.
With Dallas down 3-1 but coming on hard, ex-Flames defenceman Kris Russell got a stick on a Paul Stastny chance. But instead of the shot rifling up into the netting as it often does, it rolled right to a wide-open Brouwer at the other post.
Then Brouwer gets about 10 per cent of the puck on his shot, and the delayed effort actually allows the puck to score, where a harder shot may have been stopped.
“He’s on the beach, and there’s the ocean. It’s just got to go in,” laughed Hitchcock. “You just can’t miss it (from there).”
Brouwer was the guy who, in a tied Game 7 against Chicago, faced a vacated net in the third period. He hit the post, missed the rebound, almost stepped on the puck, and finally corralled a failing chance and scored while he was falling down.
“If I didn’t put that one in, I might have quit hockey,” Brouwer said that day, and we joked that his new nickname should be Ernie, after he four-putted the puck into the net like Ernie Els at the Masters.
This time, Brouwer’s goal at 17:42 of the second period gave St. Louis a 3-1 lead, and capped what Hitchcock called “our best period of the playoffs.”
“It was rolling to begin with, so I just tried to hit it hard. It did flip over my stick, but I got enough,” Brouwer said. “Looking at it again, I think if I would have got it right away and got good contact on it, (Kari Lehtonen’s) pad might have been in the way.
“I think it was actually fairly fortunate that I got only half of it.”
Fairly fortunate.
When’s the last time the St. Louis Blues felt that way, this late into May?