The St. Louis Blues will try to ride the momentum from their improbable Saturday night comeback at Florida when they host the Dallas Stars on Monday.
The Blues trailed the Panthers 4-1 with less than 12 minutes remaining before rallying for a 5-4 overtime victory. The dramatic victory snapped a two-game skid.
“We understand that games are at a premium,” the Blues’ Torey Krug said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “You need to collect points when you can. So we knew if there was a chance — if we got one — that we could come back in the game. We didn’t hang our heads, we just kept our heads up and went to work, and like I said, we got rewarded.”
The Blues hope to start a new streak during their roller coaster of a season. They won their first three games, lost eight straight in regulation time, then won seven consecutive games before losing the next two.
“That’s the way she’s going right now,” Krug said. “Hopefully, it’s teaching us a lot of lessons, that we can learn about and use to our advantage down the road because you’re gonna face a lot of different things throughout a season and hopefully we’ve put that behind us.”
Jordan Kyrou scored twice against the Panthers and extended his point streak to eight games, with five goals and eight assists during that span. Pavel Buchnevich has five goals and five assists in his last six games.
Blues coach Craig Berube shuffled his lineup against the Panthers, going with seven defensemen and 11 forwards. He now needs to reshuffle the forward lines Monday since Brayden Schenn exited the Florida game with a lower-body injury.
The Stars absorbed a 4-1 road loss against the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday as their seven-game point streak (4-0-3) came to an end. Dallas trailed two minutes in and never recovered.
In their previous three games, the Stars fell behind Winnipeg 4-2 in a 5-4 overtime loss, fell behind Chicago 4-1 in a 6-4 victory, and on Nov. 21 fell behind Colorado 1-0 and 2-1 in a 3-2 shootout loss.
“It’s a lot easier when you’re out in front, and the analytics show the success rate when you’re out in front early,” Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. “It feels like we’ve been playing from behind every night here lately. We’ve got to fix that.”
The Stars barely threatened against the Avalanche on Saturday as Colorado goaltender Alexandar Georgiev had 41 saves.
“It felt like they were on us early, then we got our game going the second half of the first (period),” Dallas captain Joe Pavelski said. “Second period was good. We were on them there. We were on the power play enough. We were on the inside making some plays. Got that score within one there and we had opportunities to keep coming at them.”
The Stars’ Jason Robertson remains one of the NHL’s hottest players. He has 16 goals and 12 assists during his current 15-game point streak.
–Field Level Media