As excellent as the Colorado Avalanche looked Friday night against the Chicago Blackhawks, that is how awful they look right now. As I mentioned to a friend, who is an Avs fan, they picked the right nights to play that way. The Blues have continued the steamrolling, taking advantage of a tired Avs defense and a re-energized power play that has scored five of its last 13 tries.
The Blues opened the scoring quickly and on the power play. With Paul Stastny off for a cross check that sent Alex Pietrangelo to the ice, the Blues power play — “simplified” as coach Ken Hitchcock described it to Darren Pang — went to work. Jason Arnott stayed with the puck and waited for J.S. Giguere to get too far out and leave the net open, and then he did this:
Less over-thinking, more intelligent-thinking has worked in fixing the PP (if you’d like to call 26th overall fixing it) for right now, and David Backes utilized it to the fullest extent in getting this one into the net. He got the puck out to the point, went back to the front of the net, and waited for a scrum and a rebound to tap home which is just what he got:
The Blues are up 18-7 in shots, which admittedly is a bit off of my projected 20-6 for this period, but I’ll take it. Also of note: Giguere is the reason that the score is not more out of hand. Sure, four goals on 18 shots isn’t good, but it could be a lot worse.