DALLAS — They teach you at journalism school never to lead with a cliché. But those journalism profs? They never saw Kari Lehtonen play.
So, here we go: Goaltending is 75 per cent of any good hockey team — unless you don’t get any.
Then, as the Dallas Stars confirmed on Wednesday night in Texas, it’s 100 per cent.
The St. Louis Blues scored three weak goals on Lehtonen in the first period — four, if you count Vladimir Tarasenko’s shot from the corner that was called back on an offside review — and the Stars simply could not recover, losing 6-1 in the most anticlimactic Game 7 in recent memory.
The St. Louis Blues advance to their first Western Conference Final in 15 years, and will meet the winner of Thursday night’s Game 7 between San Jose and Nashville. Their last Conference Final before ’01 came in 1986, another 15-year span. Weird.
Newsflash: These aren’t your Pop’s Blues. They’re real good, and if you stay tuned a while, they might just turn out to be the best.
“In past years,” began Paul Stastny, “there’s feelings when you go into Game 7 and sometimes you just don’t feel like you’re going to move on. The way that we feel here, we know we’ve got a good team. We know every time a challenge has come our way, we’ve kind of risen up to it.”
The Blues might have won this game anyhow, but this win came far too easily when the dam burst on Lehtonen, who is well known to implode after small spates of success. The first goal came on a rebound he’d left hanging around, typically, and the second when Tarasenko’s shot from the corner somehow found the net. That goal was called back, but Lehtonen’s confidence was long gone by that point.
Dallas head coach Lindy Ruff kept his goalie in long enough to allow two more weak goals before the first intermission. It was a mistake the veteran boss would rue.
“I think maybe it’s on me,” said the Warburg, Alberta native. “(It) looked like he got a little bit rattled. I should’ve taken him out sooner — maybe after the second one because I already had a review on a goal I didn’t like.
“You have one decision, so that’s probably on me.”
Patrik Berglund gives the Blues a big lead and ends Kari Lehtonen's night. Scrub back-and-forth to watch in slo-mo! pic.twitter.com/Q8knYBiyAr
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 12, 2016
That was the theme from the Dallas room. Protect the goalie, like any solid team would do. “We’re not here without Kari,” Jason Spezza said. “We all need to be better tonight. We all didn’t play well enough.”
Lehtonen was on the bench to start the second, having stopped five of eight shots. Meanwhile, the Blues were talking up their goalie as well — for all the right reasons.
Brian Elliott stopped 31 of 32 shots, the difference between this being a 6-5 cliffhanger or a 6-1 rout. He rebounded from being pulled in Game 6 and was locked in from puck drop. This kind of goaltending could reap for St. Louis their first Stanley Cup in franchise history. He’s been that good.
“He was phenomenal,” said big winger Troy Brouwer. “I know in this dressing room there was no question who we were going to turn to today. He’s our guy.
“We’re going to have to ride him a couple more times throughout these playoffs, but he’s a guy we can rely on.”
Brouwer, who’s on his way to being one of the most sought after free agents come July 1, was fantastic in his eighth consecutive Game 7. This guy is a true leader — a big, rugged, six-foot-three winner who has helped to lift the Blues from a history of coming up small in big moments.
The line of Brouwer, Robby Fabbri and Stastny each had a goal and two assists in Game 7. They could not be contained.
“We made a lot of little plays, little short plays in and around their D-men, and buried our opportunities,” Brouwer said. “We talked before the game, said we wanted to be the difference in this game tonight, and I feel like we made a good impact.”
This is the first time since the Blues inaugural season, 1967-68, that St. Louis has won multiple Game 7s in a post-season. They knocked out the mighty Chicago Blackhawks last round, and now the league’s highest scoring offensive machine in Dallas.
No offence to San Jose or Nashville, but neither will be favoured to beat St. Louis.
“We know we’re one of the last four teams standing, and we’re halfway to our ultimate goal,” said captain David Backes. “We beat a heck of a team in the first round and that gave us a lot of confidence. We’re up against a heck of a team over there too, that would never say die and kept coming and coming and coming.”
Clearly, it takes one to know one.
