EDMONTON, Alberta — The St. Louis Blues dropped their final round-robin game Sunday, bumping them to the fourth seed in the Western Conference and a first-round matchup with the Vancouver Canucks.
The Blues will be searching for their first win in the NHL bubble when they take on the Canucks in a best-of-seven series.
Joe Pavelski tied Sunday's game with 31.4 seconds left in the third period, Anton Khudobin stopped all three shots he faced in the shootout and the Dallas Stars beat the St. Louis Blues 2-1 in round-robin play Sunday to clinch the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference.
After Denis Gurianov scored the only goal of the shootout, Dallas will face the Calgary Flames in the first round of the playoffs. The Stars have some momentum going into that best-of-seven series after picking up their first win of any kind since Feb. 25.
Defending Stanley Cup champion St. Louis went winless in the round robin and will next face the Vancouver Canucks. The Blues dropped from first in the West when the NHL season was halted in March to the conference's fourth seed.
Blues backup Jake Allen stopped 18 of the 19 shots he faced in his first action of the NHL's restart. Starter Jordan Binnington did not dress. Robert Thomas scored on the first shot of the game, and the Blues didn't have another goal the rest of the way.
The two teams that played in the 2019 Cup Final, the Blues and Boston Bruins, each went 0-3 in round-robin play to go from first to fourth.
“They’re a defending Stanley Cup champion, had a good regular season,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said of the Blues. “Is the mental edge there for them yet, or is it because they’re a bigger, heavier team it takes them a while to sort of wear teams down?”
The Blues were 1-1-1 against the Canucks in the regular season. Vancouver beat the Minnesota Wild in a best-of-five series to earn a spot in the first round.
Game 1 of the series will be Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. Central time.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
