It was an eventful night in New York City last week when the St. Louis Blues took on the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
A nationally-televised game between two Top-10 teams at the most famous arena on the planet, the matchup had the makings of a marquee night in an exciting NHL season.
With Pavel Buchnevich geared up to face his former team for the first time since being traded last summer, the Blues were hungry for a win in the Big Apple.
Down 2-0 with three minutes to go in the second period, the Blues lit ablaze. Brandon Saad made a beautfiul backhand pass to Ryan O'Reilly on a rush, and the Blues captain finished high to get the Blues on the board. The Blues' next shot attempt evened the score when Jordan Kyrou made a long pass from the defensive zone to an all-alone Ivan Barbashev, who sniped the top right corner over Shesterkin's glove side.
One shot later, the Blues took the lead.
Colton Parayko dished the puck to O'Reilly, who was parked directly behind Shesterkin. O'Reilly found David Perron on the right side, who snapped the puck off a tee to take the lead with 16 seconds to go in the period, lasting through the buzzer.
The momentum flipped again though, as a difficult third period for the Blues resulted in a 5-3 loss.
"(The Rangers) upped their intensity in the third and had us on our heels," said Blues Head Coach Craig Berube. "We played two real good periods, but we have to close that out."
Three straight losses to non-playoff teams following that night in New York has given the Blues all the more reason to try and turn things around in the Thursday night rematch.
"We know we can beat this team," said O'Reilly. "It's gonna be tough, but it's a full 60 (minutes) that I think we're all looking forward to."
The stage is set this Thursday at Enterprise Center, with the Blues hungry to avenge last week's loss while also righting the ship on home ice.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
BLUES Ryan O'Reilly, whose defense and playmaking have remained strong despite the Blues' current slide. O'Reilly recorded a goal and an assist in the 5-3 loss at Madison Square Garden, bringing his career total to 14 points in 20 games against the Rangers.
RANGERS Chris Kreider, whose League-leading 18th power-play goal on the season proved the game winner in New York last week. The 30-year-old forward has matched his career high with 53 points thus far, and his 38 goals rank second in the League.
The St. Louis Blues will try to snap a four-game winless streak when they host the New York Rangers on Thursday night.
The Blues are in an 0-3-1 rut that started with a 5-3 loss to the Rangers in New York last Wednesday. They've scored all of four goals in their past three games, losing twice in regulation and once in overtime.
"We've got to keep looking at things and fix it," coach Craig Berube said. "Guys will get their mojo back and they'll start executing again; I really believe that, and we'll start scoring goals. Right now, we're not getting enough opportunities to score goals. We're not getting enough power plays -- and when we do get power plays, it's not very good.
"The execution offensively, we're not very good right now with the puck. We're not executing, there's a lot of shots getting blocked, we're just not generating enough shots right now."
Looking to play a more direct game, the Blues promoted grinding forwards MacKenzie MacEachern and Alexei Toropchenko from Springfield of the American Hockey League for their game against the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday. They played together on the fourth line, and each saw less than nine minutes of ice time in a 4-1 loss.
The Blues need their top three forward lines to play a more north-south game as well. Their side-to-side plays have not been clicking.
"You kind of get into these funks once in a while, and we've got to be able to see it through on the other side of that," defenseman Justin Faulk said. "Sometimes it is tough, you don't execute and you got to kind of cut your losses there and just go to a game that's pretty simple and sometimes just build a greasy one to kind of get ourselves out of it. I think that's kind of where we're headed here."
The Rangers started their four-game road swing with a 4-1 victory against the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday, but they lost 5-2 to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday to snap their three-game winning streak.
"I thought we did some good things, but I thought (the Wild) were a little more desperate," Rangers center Ryan Strome said. "I think the first period was fairly even, they just had a little more desperation that accounted for those two goals and then we did a good job getting back in the game and just a couple quick ones hurt us.
"Obviously, a tough result -- but second of a four-game trip, move on."
The Rangers started backup goaltender Alexandar Georgiev against the Wild, so they are likely to come back to Vezina Trophy candidate Igor Shesterkin (28-6-3, 1.93 goals-against average) against the Blues. Shesterkin made 29 saves when the Rangers beat the Blues last week.
Artemi Panarin scored a goal and assisted on two others for the Rangers in that game. He has seven points (one goal, six assists) in his past five games.
Blues defenseman Marco Scandella could return from the injured list for this game, but forward Oskar Sundqvist could remain out with a persistent knee injury. Forward Pavel Buchnevich, acquired by the Blues from the Rangers last summer, was knocked out of the game against Ottawa after taking a big head-high hit from Senators forward Austin Watson and is questionable to face his former team. The Blues said Wednesday that defenseman Scott Perunovich will have surgery on his left wrist and will be out for at least eight weeks.
