“If I didn’t put that one in, I might have quit hockey.” — Troy (Ernie Els) Brouwer.
ST. LOUIS — You can go a long, long time and not see a puck carom off of two goalposts and stay out of the net — twice in the same series — for the same team.
But the thing is, the St. Louis Blues and their fans, they know a little something about a long, long time. They’ve been kicked in the teeth here on more nights than St. Louis has ribs, and lost in an early round with a good team more than some cities have even had good teams — period.
If you could somehow stack on end all of the freaky breaks and underwhelming performances that have gone against or been authored by these aptly named Blues over the years, in playoff fizzle after playoff fizzle, you could go down to the Mississippi River and build another Arch.
This time, the big break fell St. Louis’ way in a 3-2 Game 7 win. In fact, two big breaks. Because the first one fell to Troy Brouwer, who agonizingly four-putted the game winner into an empty net. “It was like mini-golf,” said his coach, Ken Hitchcock.
Brouwer took a pass from Robby Fabbri well inside Corey Crawford’s crease, with an entirely vacated net staring him down. He hit the post with his initial volley, swiped and missed at the rebound, damned near stepped on the puck at the same time, then finally retrieved the puck on the backhand and deposited it into the net as he was falling.
He looked like Ernie Els at Augusta, and had Brouwer not scored, the play would have been logged as a video metaphor for the Blues’ existence. It was, as Hitchcock said, “the forward tees,” and Brouwer almost pulled a Jean van de Velde.
“If I didn’t put that one in, I might have quit hockey,” Brouwer said. “That was the ugliest goal I ever scored, but probably the most timely.”
The goal came with 11:29 to play. Just over seven minutes later, a period entirely composed of intense Blackhawks pressure, Brent Seabrook — who has been an unlikely hero for Chicago so many times that perhaps the term should no longer apply — unleashed a slapshot.
The puck made it through the usual maze, striking Brian Elliott’s right post at the sharpest of angles. And here is where the hockey gods come in, because a degree or two to the left — maybe a sixteenth of an inch — and that puck pings into the net.
Instead, as if the two franchises had exchanged karma for a fortnight, the puck travelled across the net and above the goal-line, hitting the left post and staying out. Exactly as Andrew Ladd’s shot had done earlier in the series, a hockey rarity that you can go months without seeing. Like a triple play, or maybe a game-losing balk.
“It just doesn’t really feel right,” said Patrick Kane in defeat. He skated miles with the puck on his stick in an attempt to keep his team alive in this Game 7. “It’s just a disappointing, weird feeling right now.”
Not a year after the Cubs had knocked the Cardinals out of baseball’s playoffs, the exact equivalent of this NHL relationship, the Blues beat the Blackhawks. Now the Blues go to Round 2 in Dallas, where Hitchcock coached the Stars to their only Stanley Cup back in 1999.
“You play in a series like this, you see why that team has won three Cups,” Hitchcock said of the Blackhawks. “But we have knowledge (now), and it’s the emotional knowledge of how deep you have to dig. We found that in this series.
“I want us to use it now.”
The Blues always lose this game. The Blackhawks always win it. And as St. Louis blew an early 2-0 lead Monday night, after frittering away a 3-1 series lead, the script just looked destined to unfold as it always has.
“It’s this inner-confidence that (Chicago has) where you think you can make the other team crack,” Hitchcock said. “I’m sure leaving Game 6, they probably thought they had us cracked. They pushed us back hard and we had no answer for Game 6. We came back and had an answer tonight.
“We needed to not just run up against the wall and fall backwards again. We’ve got (the knowledge) now.”
Blues defenceman Jay Bouwmeester had played 13 NHL seasons and four more in junior and never won a playoff series. Hitchcock, maybe captain David Backes, some other veterans, all were likely to be shown the door here had the Blues lost.
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But something funny happened on the way to another Blackhawks coronation. Troy Brouwer had an open net, bludgeoned the puck square, and somehow managed to clobber it into the net.
And it changed everything.
