St. Louis Blues win third straight, shutout Vancouver Canucks 3-0 -NHL Match Update
St. Louis continues to impress while the 2011 National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup finalists, Vancouver, continues to disappoint as the Blues earned their third straight victory and second consecutive on the road as they shutout the Canucks, 3-0, at
a sold-out Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Coming out of a disappointing loss against the young Edmonton Oilers team, Vancouver’s defensive mechanisms did not show any significant improvement, while their offence also suffered a major blow by remaining unable to get the puck past St. Louis goalie,
Brian Elliott.
Vancouver’s veteran goaltender, Roberto Luongo, was taken out of their matchup against Edmonton after the Oilers scored three straight in the second period, forcing the Canucks management to eject him and send Cory Schneider in as a replacement. Schneider
started against St. Louis and despite facing the same amount of shots as his counterpart, he was unable to block all of them and fell short on three out of 31.
"It was a frustrating night for me", Luongo said after their disappointing matchup against Edmonton. "I felt I was moving well and seeing the puck well in the first period and then in a five-minute span they got three quick ones and that was all she wrote".
Seeing how the St. Louis goaltending has improved dramatically shows that there is surely some driving force behind it.
"Internal competition drives a hockey team to be better every day and this is no different", St. Louis Blues head coach, Davis Payne, said of his team's goaltending situation.
Alexander Steen inaugurated the scoring 8:29 into the second period, which had no penalties called at all.
St. Louis managed to kill two penalties during the third period and scored two back-to-back as Alexander Steen potted his second of the night and Patrik Berglund added another with less than three minutes remaining in regulation to play.
The Blues play their last two contests of the month on the road against Calgary Flames on Friday and Edmonton Oilers on Sunday.
Vancouver has one more game to go at home against the Washington Capitals on Saturday before the new month begins.
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