It’s safe to say that there aren’t too many ways that Game 3 could have gone worse for the St. Louis Blues. Heck, it wasn’t even an ideal win for the Colorado Avalanche, as both teams suffered key injuries in the game.
First, it was the Avalanche receiving the bad news, as defenseman Samuel Girard lasted one shift before getting hurt and having to leave the game after Blues center Ivan Barbashev hit him into the boards. The Avs announced after the game that Girard broke his broken sternum, and will be out for the rest of the playoffs, a key loss for the team as he was a top four defender.
To make matters worse, the Blues scored a couple minutes later to take the 1-0 lead, on a shot that broke Devon Toews’ stick and went into the net.
But then, it was the Blues who started to suffer bad luck. First, they lost goaltender Jordan Binnington only a few minutes after taking the lead after Avs center Nazem Kadri knocked Blues defender Calle Rosen into him. It’s a big blow for the Blues, as Binnington has played a huge role in the team’s resurgence after going down 2-1 to the Minnesota Wild in the first round, and kept them in this series against the Avs. He had a 4-1 record and a .948 save percentage heading into Game 3.
To add salt to the wound, Ville Husso, who replaced Binnington, had a rough game in relief, stopping only 19 of 23 shots in the loss.
Kadri wasn’t done causing nightmares for the Blues either, as he scored the go-ahead goal and the first of the two goals the Avs scored in the second to take a 3-1 lead. Ryan O’Reilly cut the lead in half, and the Blues failed to complete the comeback in a 5-2 loss, but they at least refused to give Kadri the satisfaction of having the game-winning goal.
That wasn’t the end of the drama either. In the postgame interview, Kadri believes that Binnington threw a water bottle at him while reacting to the collision. This series is about to get really interesting.
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