St. Louis Blues deny San Jose Sharks comeback 4-3, take series lead -NHL Playoffs Update
Brian Elliott, the top goalie of the 2011-2012 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season, worked the net beyond expectations for St. Louis as the Blues denied a late comeback to San Jose to edge the Sharks, 4-3, Monday night, April 16, 2012, at the sold-out
HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.
The 17,000 plus San Jose crowd was bent on seeing their home team take a commanding lead in the 2012 NHL Western Conference playoff quarterfinals but St. Louis’ well rounded performance throughout the matchup worked miracles.
Going into the matchup without Jaroslav Halak starting the match due to an undisclosed upper-body injury sustained during practice, St. Louis was still confident knowing they had a top-class goalie.
"We're lucky because we've been a two-man rotation since Day 1 here," Blues coach, Ken Hitchcock, said. "You don't expect something like this to happen but it does. We're lucky we're in the situation we're in. We have two good goalies, a 1 and a 1A literally.
Both guys have played in pretty much every building and both guys have played well in every building. For us, we don't miss a beat."
Patrik Berglund gave St. Louis the lead with his power play goal and third of the series as Tommy Wingels of San Jose was called for high-sticking. Brent Burns levelled it nearly two minutes later on an added man advantage of their own, this time as St.
Louis lost Roman p***k to cross-checking.
The two goal burst by St. Louis’ Andy McDonald and Jason Arnott on a power play by the midway mark ultimately gave them the match as Alexander Steen scored the last Blues goal before Colin White and Logan Couture made a late run to rebound but failed.
Power plays ultimately got the job done for St. Louis as they capitalised on three of four chances, something San Jose had wanted to avoid but failed to do so.
With a 2-1 lead in the series now, St. Louis is definitely confident going into game 4 in San Jose against the Sharks on Thursday, April 19, 2012. It will be interesting whether if Blues will put the home team on the brink of elimination or will San Jose
manage to comeback.
Tags: