I got a brain jolt last night as I watched the Blues celebrate their win in a crazy Game Three in Dallas.
I goofed.
I hate making mistakes.
No, the Blues still have the odds working in their favor of winning the series after coming out on top last night – 71.7 is an accurate number. My goof came right out of the gate in my writing yesterday:
Two one-goal games, split in St. Louis.
Identical scores: 3-2
Ugh.
Slap to the forehead.
Boy, I don’t like empty net goals any less than I like mistakes. I forgot the Roope Hintz empty netter in the dying seconds on Saturday. The final score of Game Two was 4-2, not 3-2. It did seem like a one-goal game, but it was my error nonetheless. No excuses, and I apologize.
My subsequent thought last night was just as much of a lightning bolt.
Hey, the Blues just did the same thing – committing what appeared to be ghastly late-game mistakes that threatened to keep Dallas in the game and force an overtime. But they overcame the mistakes. And besides, now you’ve got a great jumping off point for a follow-up story!
So here we go.
I’ve learned recently that it’s human nature to make mistakes. Without mistakes, we as people don’t grow - so long as you learn from them. And then…Let. It. Go.
So now, back to the game.
The Blues were nursing a 2-1 lead, just under seven minutes to go. Then the hockey gods handed the Blues a gift in the form of a power play that could lead to an insurance goal.
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Not so fast, there.
The Blues turned it over, and Andrew Cogliano exchanged the returned gift into the tying goal.
Uh oh.
I had been sensing an overtime, and now my thoughts were becoming reality.
I’ll repeat: Not so fast, there.
After hitting the post on one try, Alex Pietrangelo followed up with a slap shot that floated past Ben Bishop, and now with five-and-a-half minutes to go the Blues led again.
But there’s a reason hockey is played with a frozen piece of rubber on a slab of ice.
Unpredictability.
The hero takes off the cape and puts on the horns: A Petro turnover led to Tyler Seguin beating Jordan Binnington, and we’re tied again.
Okay, now we’re going to overtime, I thought.
Just over two minutes to go, and Bishop, the goalie we love when he’s not playing against the Blues, averts a Dallas disaster when he made a reflex save to stop a deflection off a teammate’s stick.
Crazy game, right?
No time to appreciate the madness, as both teams were spilling their guts to the finish line – or into overtime, it seemed.
Then, the national battle between Dallas and St. Louis, with an international trophy as the ultimate prize, turned regional.
Or, as Frank Cusumano so aptly broke it down: Oakville vs. Chaminade.
In St. Louis it’s all about where you went to high school, right?
Patrick Maroon, the former Oakville Tiger turned St. Louis Bandit turned Blues big rig, shed his man like an ugly sweater, took advantage of the separation to gather the puck and from a bad angle beat Bishop with 1:38 to go.
I held my breath as the NBCSN crew debated if interference was going to be called.
Who was with me? That push by Maroon could be seen either way.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Review. Review. Review. C’mon, Toronto.
Goal.
GOAL!
Exhaaaaaaaaaaaale.
I quickly took breath back in, because with four goals scored in 5:16, there was still plenty of time left for my overtime premonition to play out.
The game would only be crazy if the Blues had run out the clock at that point. But no, it had to veer into the surreal when Colton Parayko flipped the puck over the glass and got hit with a delay-of-game penalty.
45 seconds to go. Will the madness never end??
Ryan O’Reilly won the ensuing faceoff.
Binnington made a save with 18 ticks left.
Another shot was blocked.
Game over.
++++++
The lesson here is not that the Blues will go mistake-free after overcoming the craziness of Monday night. I will surely make more obvious writing errors down the road. (Hope you’re not reading this, boss.)
What’s to be taken from all this is to push past the mistakes. Let ‘em go and drive all the harder. Be better and grow.
The Blues are a mentally tough team – if you can maintain the confidence that you’re a good team when you’re the bottom feeder in the points race, a little adversity isn’t going to stop them now when they’re in the second round of the playoffs.
Three years ago, the Blues were a veteran team with mental toughness that ran out of gas in the conference finals.
This team is younger, and just as mentally resilient, it seems. And with many of the heavyweight teams already bounced from the playoff chase, the road to a Cup may not be as difficult.
And let’s make sure we’re truly on board with the lesson learned.
The Blues won last night, 4-3.
