Sunday, May 8, 2022. 7:22 PM
SUMMARY
The St. Louis Blues tied the game 2-2 in their first-round series, beating the Minnesota Wild 5-2 on Sunday.
Blues coach Craig Berube decided to bet on 2019 Stanley Cup hero goaltender Jordan Binnington instead of Ville Husso. The bet paid off. Binnington gave up two goals on 30 shots in his first playoff start.
Binnington, who had lost his last nine playoff games, scored his first playoff win since winning Game 7 of the Finals over Boston three years ago.
Jordan Kyrou gave the Blues the lead after capitalizing on a fine effort from his teammates who won a battle behind the net to grab the puck before passing the puck to him.
Kirill Kaprizov scored again for the Wild to make it 1-1 in the first. His fifth goal allows him to tie a mark in a series in the history of his team. He joined Wes Walz and Marian Gaborik in the training archives. They had achieved the feat in the Western semi-finals against Vancouver in 2003.
The Blues scored twice within 54 seconds of the second period to take a 3-1 lead.
David Perron, who scored a hat trick in Game 1, was down on his luck when the puck slowly made its way into the net after it ricocheted off the Wild goaltender and slid towards the red line. Marcus Foligno did try to stop the puck from moving forward, but he seemed to hurt his cause with the result that the Blues regained the lead.
Kyrou put on his second of the game after serving the enemy defender a cup of coffee before going to beat Marc-André Fleury with a skillful backhand shot. The Quebec doorman blocked 29 shots.
Trailing by two goals, the Wild didn’t give up in the third, hitting the target 2:39 into the game to make it 3-2. Again, Matt Boldy was lucky by weakly pushing the puck which seemed to be immobilized.
Minnesota continued to attack but failed to tie the game until Perron, who also had an assist, scored his second of the game in an empty net with 1:58 remaining before seeing teammate Ryan O’Reilly added a five goal with a shot between Fleury’s pads.
The two clubs will meet in Minnesota on Tuesday.