Before the St. Louis Blues left town a week ago, Robert Thomas labeled their four-game road trip \u201cmassive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first two games were against the San Jose Sharks and Los Angeles Kings \u2014 two teams directly ahead of them in the Western Conference wild-card race. The next two were against the Anaheim Ducks and Colorado Avalanche \u2014 two division leaders.<\/p>\n
When the Blues lost one-goal games in San Jose and L.A. in excruciating fashion, it seemed they could put an end to any dream of remaining in the playoff hunt. San Jose\u2019s Adam Gaudette scored with 27 seconds left in regulation for a 5-4 Sharks victory, and the Kings\u2019 Trevor Moore scored 1:56 into overtime for a 2-1 win. Suddenly, the Blues were five points back with eight games to play.<\/p>\n
But then St. Louis went into Anaheim and Colorado and won 6-2 and 3-2, respectively. Now, just as suddenly, the Blues are three points back in the wild-card race with six games to play.<\/p>\n
The Nashville Predators hold the No. 2 wild card at the moment, with 81 points and six games remaining. Only the Kings (81 points, six games left) and Sharks (79 points, seven games left) are ahead of the Blues.<\/p>\n
The odds of pulling it off remain extremely low, but after back-to-back wins over the Ducks and Avalanche, who came into the games with a combined record of 91-46-15, there\u2019s still reason for Jim Montgomery\u2019s club to pay attention to the standings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t talk about it, but I think it\u2019s human nature everyone goes and looks,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cI do my very poor mathematics, and I\u2019m like, well, I don\u2019t know, if we win our games, we\u2019ll get in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are the Blues\u2019 six remaining games:<\/p>\n
Tuesday vs. Avalanche
\nThursday vs. Winnipeg Jets
\nSaturday at Chicago Blackhawks
\nApril 13 vs. Minnesota Wild
\nApril 14 vs. Pittsburgh Penguins
\nApril 16 at Utah Mammoth<\/p>\n
Next up is a rematch against Colorado, which can win the Western Conference with its next win. But given the way the Blues played against the Avalanche Sunday, and the production they\u2019re getting from the Thomas-Jimmy Snuggerud-Dylan Holloway line, it\u2019s hard to count them out.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the way we were battling,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cIt was a physical game, and the first two periods, we won 56 percent of our battles. That\u2019s a really good measuring stick against an elite team like that. Then just the way we kept going to the net hard, the way we played north, we didn\u2019t complicate the game for ourselves. They\u2019re a good team and they had their opportunities. It was a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Avs came into the game with an NHL-best 205 five-on-five goals for, compared to just 141 for the Blues (23rd in the league). On Sunday, the Blues outscored them 3-2 in that department.<\/p>\n
All three goals came off Thomas\u2019 stick. He stood behind his words, delivering his first NHL hat trick in his 524th career game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s taken a long time, so it feels good \u2014 a little bit of a relief,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
With the score tied 2-2 Sunday, Thomas scored what proved to be the game winner with 2:50 to play. Snuggerud dragged the puck into the slot and then set up the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a high-end play (by Snuggerud) to fake the shot and slide it over,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cHe made a ton of awesome plays today and was a huge reason for our win tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snuggerud, deflecting credit, replied: \u201cHe\u2019s an All-Star and he played like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since returning from a minor leg procedure March 1, Thomas has 10 goals and 23 points and is a plus-23 in 16 games. He has at least one point in 14 of those games, and Sunday\u2019s three-point night was his seventh multi-point game since returning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was terrific,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cRight from his first shift, he had the puck on his stick. He scored the three goals, but he made about six high-end passes. I\u2019m sitting on the bench and I don\u2019t even see the lanes that he sees going full speed. That line has been doing a lot of good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snuggerud and Holloway had both assists on all three of Thomas\u2019s goals, and the line combined for nine points and a plus-8 rating. The Blues finished with a 14-7 advantage in high-danger chances, including 8-3 for that line, which was assembled March 6 against the Sharks. In the 14 games since, it\u2019s scored 15 five-on-five goals and given up zero, according to Natural Stat Trick.<\/p>\n
But those three are not the only reason the Blues are still in the race.<\/p>\n
St. Louis is 13-3-3 since the Olympic break, and with goaltender Joel Hofer picking up the win Sunday, he\u2019s 9-1-2 over that stretch with a 1.71 goals-against average and .943 save percentage. That\u2019s best in the league in that span.<\/p>\n
By holding the Avs to just two goals Sunday, the Blues have kept opponents to two or fewer in 15 of 19 games since returning from the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re committed to playing defense, and that\u2019s the No. 1 area that\u2019s vastly improved,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cAnd because we\u2019re really committed to having good sticks \u2014 angling, beating our guy back to our own net \u2014 we\u2019re getting opportunities the other way because good defense leads to offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, the Blues have shaved off 11 of the 14 points by which they trailed in the wild-card race coming out of the break. According to NHL Stats, if they finish closing the gap and secure a playoff spot, it would match the 2014-15 Ottawa Senators for the largest deficit a team has overcome to qualify.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re having fun as a team, we\u2019re trying to win games and we\u2019re doing our best to try and possibly do that,\u201d Snuggerud said. \u201cComing into (Colorado\u2019s Ball Arena) is a tough one and I thought we rose to the occasion, and we need to do the same thing at home (Tuesday).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we\u2019re where we\u2019re at as a team. You want to win games, especially with just five or six games remaining now. Yeah, we\u2019re putting our head down and pushing, but we know where we\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the St. Louis Blues left town a week ago, Robert Thomas labeled their four-game road trip \u201cmassive.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85,3935],"class_list":{"0":"post-589305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-st-louis-blues"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}