Saturday's Blues OT win provided a glimpse of what series with Wild will look like

Blues blow three-goal lead, recover for 6-5 win in race for second in Central; 

first-round opponent all but set with Minnesota, should be a dandy best-of-7

By LOU KORAC
ST. LOUIS -- Well, buckle up.

Because if a first-round playoff series between the Blues and Wild feature anything close to resembling what's transpired here at Enterprise Center the past nine days, it should be a barnburner.

(St. Louis Blues/Scott Rovak)

Brayden Schenn (right) celebrates with Justin Faulk and Ivan Barbashev

after scoring in overtime of a 6-5 win against the Minnesota Wild.

The only downside to a Blues-Wild playoff series is someone will be going home much sooner than expected, or deserved.

But such is life in the NHL, and with Saturday's 6-5 overtime win over the Wild, a game in which the Blues (45-20-10) had complete control of leading 4-1 after two periods, along with a 4-3 overtime win here on April 8, there won't be much to separate these two when it comes to the dance in May.

"It's like two pretty similar games, like playoff type of games," said forward Pavel Buchnevich, who had a goal and two assists, including the wraparound assist that led to Brayden Schenn's OT winner 56 seconds in. "It's fun to play like that and a fun building to play. Excited for playoff time."

A number of the game games in recent seasons have been tight, but the Blues seem to find a way to win against the Wild. They have now beaten them seven straight times and are 11-1-1 the past 13 against Minnesota (the Wild are 2-7-5, and 0-4-3 the past seven).

Any way one slices it, expect the series to be much like the Blues had with Winnipeg in the opening round of the 2019 playoffs.

"If we do, it's kind of obviously looking that way that we are going to play them, they're a good team," Schenn said. "They're still missing pieces over there. It's going to be hard series. We’ve seen what they did to Vegas last year. They're hard, they're physical and they're going to give anything. They'll be a good test."

Some may say the Wild will have a psychological disadvantage having lost to the Blues so often recently, but that won't be the case.

"Not at all," Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. "The game was up for grabs tonight. Last game was up for grabs, that's the only two I can remember. They've got a great hockey club, obviously. And you know, we like our team.

"There's end results. We clearly want the end result. I mean, we don't want to lose hockey games, but we know that we're in games. We know that there's things that we clean up and we also know that we could have had success here tonight too and could have had success in the last game as well. It comes with overtime. There's no (3-on-3) overtime and in the playoffs, right? So so we like our group 5-on-5."

The Blues had to battle back from a 3-1 third-period deficit last week when they beat the Wild. This time, they held a 4-1 lead through two periods and had their foot on the Wild's throat. 
The problem is they had a two-man advantage to end the second and at the start following a crushing check delivered by Buchnevich on Tyson Jost that sparked a scrum between Nicolas Deslauriers and Ivan Barbashev.

But the Blues, who were 0-for-4 against Minnesota's woeful penalty kill (31st in the league at 76 percent), simply did not direct pucks to the net, mostly throwing pucks around the perimeter and leaving the door slightly open.

"We go over the 5-on-3 to start, just ... it's tough," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "A lot of times going into intermission when you go back out, you've got a 5-on-3 right away. I just don't think ... we weren't direct on it. We didn't get really any shots, any good looks. We complicated it more than we needed to, but they get a goal and kind of get us on our heels. 

"Our puck play in the third period wasn't very good. We turned some pucks over. They capitalized on them, tied it up, got the lead again, kind of a back and forth game in the third. Not like we wanted it, but we hung in there and got the win."

They did, but in a battle for second place in the Central Division and home ice advantage in the first round, allowing the Wild to grab a point Saturday wasn't ideal. The Blues lead Minnesota by one with the Wild holding a game in hand.

"Obviously it's a 4-1 game, I think guys would like to have a do-over on that and execute and really put them out of the game and at least grab some momentum for us," Schenn said. "It's going to happen where the power plays aren't always going to go your way and that one really didn’t when we started the third period."

(St. Louis Blues/Scott Rovak)

Blues forward Brandon Saad (left) scores on Wild goalie Cam Talbot in the

second period of a 6-5 overtime win on Saturday at Enterprise Center.

Minnesota scored goals 1:32 apart, by Ryan Hartman and Frederick Gaudreau, to make it a 4-3 game and all of the sudden, it's a game that shouldn't have been.

But Buchnevich restored a two-goal lead at 5-3 when he ripped a wrister from the right circle over Talbot at 9:15.

That should have locked the game down again, right?

"We probably were in a real good spot, but again, we just let them come at us too much I thought," Berube said. "And I'll give them credit, that (Kirill) Kaprizov is a dangerous player. He's hard to handle and I just think we gave up our blue line too much, too easily to that line."

Marcus Foligno and Kaprizov scored 58 seconds apart to tie the game 5-5 at 14:00 and 14:58 and all of the sudden, the life that was full inside with 18.096 fans were dumbfounded.

But the Blues prevailed in the end, and will need such resiliency in a seven-game series against this Minnesota team, one that loaded up at the trade deadline and one that will be a tough out.

"Good. Good games," Buchnevich said. "It's going to be good for fans, interesting for us. Excited."