Three Takeaways From Blues' 7-2 Win Against Ducks
ST. LOUIS – The markings were set up for failure for the St. Louis Blues on Sunday.
They were coming off an impressive 5-1 win against the Minnesota Wild in St. Paul, Minn., and a quick, short trip home was on the docket to get ready for a quick turnaround less than 24 hours later on home ice against the Anaheim Ducks.Captains
It was anything but short. In fact, it was an unexpected extra night in Minnesota, something the players and staff had no control over.
Feel sorry for themselves? Not a chance. Not these surging Blues.
Instead, they punched the Ducks in the mouth, for the 10th straight meeting, and they did so emphatically, 7-2 at Enterprise Center, for their ninth win the past 13 games (9-2-2) that vaulted them into a tie with the Vancouver Canucks for the second time card from the Western Conference.
We’ll save the more pertinent details for the takeaways below, but the Blues had mechanical issues with their plane and were grounded for the night, having to travel back on gameday, which is a rarity. A 5 p.m. Central start time was pushed back to 7 p.m. and the Blues (33-28-7) got right back on the horse and saddled up and punched the Ducks (29-31-7) right in the mouth on Brayden Schenn’s 1,000th game pre-game ceremony.
Seven different players scored, including Dylan Holloway and Jake Neighbours each with a goal and an assist, Jordan Kyrou collecting three assists to match his hat trick in Minnesota, giving him six points on back to back days.
Mathieu Joseph scored shorthanded, the Blues scored a season-high three power-play goals (Holloway, Oskar Sundqvist and Neighbours) and Radek Faksa, Pavel Buchnevich and Schenn all scored, and Jordan Binnington made 23 saves, as the Blues held an opponent to less than 30 shots, which dates to Feb. 7 and is No. 1 in the NHL at 23.3 per game (the Florida Panthers are No. 2 at 23.4).
Here are Sunday’s Three Takeaways:
* Overcoming travel issues – It’s unconventional to have to travel on the same day as a game. The most recent memory was when the Blues had to travel back on a gameday at home and face the San Jose Sharks, a game the Blues lost 4-1.
A flight back from Minneapolis/St. Paul is a little over an hour, and the team was back in St. Louis just after 11 a.m., but the gameday routine gets thrown all out of whack.
Would the Blues have any legs, would they have the energy to not only play the second of as back to back, but third in four days – again?
Well, scoring 41 seconds into the game is quite the way to kickstart a game, when Schenn, literally moments after being honored and celebrated for his 1,000 games in the NHL with family on the ice, put the Blues ahead 1-0, and then Buchnevich redirecting a Neighbours pass past the nearside post on Lukas Dostal just 90 seconds in for a 2-0 lead.
Talk about playing on the front foot with a high motor.
“I’m very impressed, but as soon as they said something was wrong with our plane, we couldn’t get home, and I said, ‘We’re going to win tomorrow night,’ because it looks like our group is looking for challenges right now and looking to accept them and overcome them,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said.
“Definitely had a lot of adversity there. I think that’s the first time I’ve done that, flying on a game day in the regular season. It was a great game by us today.”
But not an easy one, according to Justin Faulk.
“Today was a tough one, I’ll be honest,” Faulk said. “I’m proud of the guys how we showed up today. I know it wasn’t a great game for sure, definitely was not our ‘A’ game, but given the circumstances back to back, having to stay overnight, travel this morning. There was room for excuses, and we always say, ‘There’s no room for excuses in this game,’ and the guys showed up and did enough to win and kind of put our foot down and make it a real good weekend for us.”
* Schenn putting a cap on his day – The captain had just had his two little boys, Huxley and Braxton in his arms, getting a silver stick from his dad, Jeff, and his wife Kelsey and mom Rita by his side. And then giving the Blues a jolt, fittingly, he was then called into action like everyone knows and expected.
Kyrou was just blasted with a blindside hit by Ducks defenseman Jacob Trouba, catching Kyrou on the side and just under the chin on his right side in the defensive zone.
Schenn immediately went into action against a tough cookie with a scrap.
It’s what any captain would do, it’s what this captain would do for his teammates.
“That’s just instincts,” Schenn said. “You don’t actually kind of see him laying there. You don’t know if he’s hurt, if he’s not. You don’t really see the hit in real time. Just instincts (to) stick up for a teammate. We’ve been doing that collectively as a team all year.”
Schenn’s been doing it since he donned the Bluenote in 2017.
“Yeah it’s awesome,” Kyrou said. “There’s nothing much you can say other than he’s just an unbelievable guy, unbelievable captain. He’s done that for me multiple times in my career. I have nothing but so much respect for him. He’s just awesome.”
If you don’t think Schenn is respected in the locker room and with his teammates, Faulk was wearing a ‘10’ hat and Schenn 1,000 games cutoff-sleeved shirt to prove his value.
“That’s a Brayden Schenn game,” Faulk said. “I’m wearing the shirt and hat again. He means a lot to this group, there’s no doubt about that what he means to the team, the organization, the city. Each guy individually, he does everything for everybody. I think if you want to pick anyone in the city that said, ‘If that guy qualified to be the captain of the Blues and represent this city and what sports and what this city’s all about, the character,’ he’s that guy. For him to go do that tonight, score right away, step up for Kyrou, get in a fight, I know he’s got a lot of people in town and that’s just who he is as a person and as a teammate and a guy. Not to say I don’t expect anything different, but he’s just a quality, quality person. I’m really happy for him.
“He just happened to be the closest guy obviously and surprise! His timing was perfect for that. I wouldn’t have questioned if that was going to happen. That’s his character, that’s his personality, he stands up for anybody at any time. He means a lot to this group and we’re real happy for him.”
Montgomery compared Schenn with Blues greats.
“Not only embody the spirit of the Blues,” Montgomery said. “With all the players that I've mentioned that have been warriors for years, why the Blues do have a great tradition. Plagers, Federkos, [Garry] Unger, [Brian] Sutter, [Perry] Turnbull, Brett Hull shows up, Scott Stevens is here, Brendan Shanahan, [Chris] Pronger, [Al] MacInnis, [Scott] Mellanby, [Keith] Tkachuk, [Barret] Jackman. There's so many guys that have let an imprint and I think when you look at Brayden Schenn, the way he plays the game, he has the skill, the will, he fights, he checks. I tip my hat off to him because he's made my job a lot easier coming in here the way he grabs a hold of that dressing room.”
Schenn, sporting red marks on his face from his tilt with Trouba, was only missing that assist for his third-ever Gordie Howe hat trick.
“Special day, special night obviously scoring on the first shift,” Schenn said. “You play a lot of hockey and you usually don’t score on the first shift, and tonight with family and friends here and after the ceremony, pretty cool with how it all works out. Most importantly, we got the job done tonight and continue to climb up the standings.”
* A scorching power play – Don’t look now, but Montgomery called it, and called it right.
“It’s been like this for a while, like since the outdoor game [2025 Discover NHL Winter Classic],” the Blues coach said of the man advantage. “If you look at what our power play has done since then, I bet you it’s top four in the league.”
He’s 100 percent correct. The Blues are fourth in the NHL since Dec. 31 with a 29.9 percent efficiency after going 3-for-5 on Sunday, giving them multiple games with power play goals in two of the last three games (they had just two multiple power-play games in the first 65 games).
They’re 5-for-9 the past three games and it got started on their second attempt when Holloway ripped a Faulk one-timer from just inside the top of the right circle at 8:09 of the second period for a 3-0 lead.
The puck movement was so crisp when Neighbours beat former Blue Ville Husso at 6:18 of the third period for a 6-2 lead, then Sundqvist one-timed a slam dunk from the left of the goal at 12:19 to make it 7-2.
Why is it going so well lately?
“I think we’ve got two pretty competitive units right now,” Kyrou said. “It’s kind of like we’re almost battling against each other, see who can try to score. It’s a really good, competitive nature to try to have. I think that’s good. We’re also just attacking the net more I think. We’re not really looking to make the three, four passes, backdoor passes. We’re kind of just shooting, crashing then net, getting rebounds and creating from there.”
Whether the personnel has been tinkered with or execution has changed, the unit is a bonafide threat.
“The way we’re converging at the net and we’re keeping guys low,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t score on three plays on the power play today that are indicative to me of a power play that is clicking … there was a play by Schenn to the backdoor to 63 [Neighbours] that didn’t go in, and there was a play right before we scored, the Sundqvist goal, where [Robert] Thomas went backdoor to ‘Sunny.’
“Those kind of plays where you’re making penetrating passes to scoring areas that are basically tap-ins on the backdoor, that really makes a penalty kill shrink, which opens up the top and now you have a lot of options, and our players are executing at a high level and I think [assistant coach] Steve Ott’s done a tremendous job.”
* As an added bonus to the Three Takeaways, it’s important to note that Montgomery didn’t like stretches of the Blues’ game when it was 3-1, but the shift when Faksa scored to make it 4-1 at 15:39 of the second came off a pure hustle play by Nathan Walker from center ice, winning a race for the puck with talented young Ducks D-man Jackson LaCombe to keep a puck alive behind the goal line, working a give-and-go with Faksa, who finished Walker’s backhand pass through the crease.
But that’s what’s happening with this team right now, these kinds of hustle plays.
“Yes, and it’s permeated through the lineup,” Montgomery said. “It’s everybody doing it. That line has been doing it all year, and those habits and details are what got players like Walker in the league and why we value him so much, and it’s nice to see that those kind of habits are just going right through the lineup right now.
“… When it went 3-1 there, I didn’t like our game a little bit for a while, then 'Faksi’s like went right out there and got the momentum back and they got that goal. The way we get back to our identity and the way we have success, it’s the maturity of the team I guess, how we manage games in that combination. That shows the maturity of our group. It’s not easy to go out there at the end of three in four and travel against a team that’s rested and beat them up 7-2.”
And the second hustle and grit play came from Sundqvist, who was determined to win a puck from his knees in the D-zone that sprung Joseph for a 2-on-1 with Sundqvist joining, and Joseph wired a wrister that made it 5-1 at 18:10 of the second.
“It’s been awesome. Obviously winning is awesome,” Kyrou said. “We love winning in this building, playing in front of our fans. It’s good that we’re doing that and we just want to keep that up.”
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