The last time the St. Louis Blues were in this exact same situation facing the Vancouver Canucks, they were blown out of the arena and put out of their misery quickly.
That was in late October, and the Blues were in the same situation on Wednesday after a hard-fought come-from-behind 4-3 win against the Calgary Flames on Tuesday. They were going to get the same kind of mindset from the team with the most points (68) in the league again.
The early portion of the game indicated it might be more of the same as the 5-0 whitewash the Blues took from the Canucks on Oct. 27, but it turned out quite differently albeit a few nervy, anxious moments in the third period and frittering away the lead, but the Blues recovered on Brayden Schenn's overtime winner in a 4-3 win at Rogers Arena.
Let's dig right into the three keys that helped the Blues finally (FINALLY!) get to four games over .500 (24-20-2) for the first time since the final game of the regular season (April 29, 2022) in the 2021-22 season.
1. Blues withstood early push, settled into first period -- The Canucks (32-11-5) had every intent of putting the Blues out of their misery early.
The puck was at one end of the rink for the first half of the opening period so much that those in attendance wouldn't be able to tell if Casey DeSmith or Kirk McLean was in goal for Vancouver.
But when Jake Neighbours had St. Louis' first shot, and it was a quality one too from the slot, with 9:03 remaining, it seemed to fuel the rest of the period, one in which the Blues won by scoring twice.
The Canucks had a lot of territorial edge through the first 10-11 minutes, but what was key is the Blues held them to perimeter play, and when Joel Hofer, who made 29 saves, was called on, he did make a couple key saves to keep the game scoreless.
2. Nice recovery after giving up lead -- When I say nice recovery, I didn't mean just the Schenn OT winner to pick up the two points that the Blues held firmly in their fists much of the game.
Not only did they have to recover after Pius Suter scored his third goal of the game with 51.3 seconds left to tie the game 3-3 after the Blues entered the third up 2-0, but they had to overcome an overturned goal by Schenn that would have made it 3-0 in the second period.
It was a pretty weak call made by Francis Charron when he whistled Neighbours for cross-checking -- and I use those words lightly here -- Ian Cole to the ice as Schenn was beating DeSmith glove side.
Cole, a first-round pick by the Blues way back in 2007, is listed at 6-foot-1, 225 pounds. If that shove from behind is all it takes to knock him to the ground, opponents will be coming his way often.
So the Blues overcame what could have been a three-goal lead, then recovered after surrendering the tying goal late and giving up three in the third period against a very good opponent.
3. Shot-blocking crucial -- The Canucks had good puck possession in this game, and they had some long, sustained shifts in the Blues' zone.
That means the Canucks were going to have pucks on sticks and in good shooting positions.
They out-Corsied the Blues 79-46 in the game, but only managed to get 32 shots on goal thanks to 23 Blues blocks, and some of them were quite timely.
Eleven Blues had blocked shots in the game, led by Colton Parayko, who had six of them in his team-high 26:55 of ice time. And besides getting two assists in the game, Robert Thomas made sure to be known on the defensive side as well with four blocks.
When you're blocking five shots against Elias Pettersson and another four off the stick of Quinn Hughes and three from Brock Boeser, those are scorers that are in good shooting positions, and the Blues seemed to get a number of timely blocks throughout the game.
