Vancouver Canucks, St. Louis Blues

St. Louis Blues 5, Vancouver Canucks 1 – Dull Ugly

The Vancouver Canucks had a glorious chance to jump out on top of St. Louis when Blues defenceman Colton Parayko went off for tripping just 20-seconds into the game and again at the 5:08 mark for cross checking. The Canucks racked up some shots but couldn’t bury one past netminder Jordan Binnington, who stopped all eleven shots in the first period.

St. Louis fired 12 at Spencer Martin, who looked equally dialed in, plus one off the cross bar.

2nd Period Nosedive

Matters got much busier in the second with a Canucks goal sandwiched by a couple from the Blues.

Jordan Kyrou scored his 14th goal of the season from a nice touch pass off a big rebound to make it 1-0.

Ilya Mikheyev tied it for the Vancouver Canucks at 12:24 only to have the Blues re-take the lead just :38 seconds later on a Nathan Walker 4th-line marker.

St. Louis would add another from Robert Thomas at 18:50 on the power play.

Moments later the Canucks would take a too-many-men on the ice penalty. The Vancouver Canucks looked defeated, discombobulated and downtrodden.

3rd Period

The ugliness continued in the third period when the Blues actually converted on the carry-over too-many-men power play at 1:07. It was Kyrou.

He would finish his first career hat trick and give St. Louis a 5-1 lead at 9:19.

The Rogers Arena crowd began moaning and groaning as time wound down.

Vancouver actually outshot St. Louis 34-27, proving how meaningless that statistic can mean on occasion, while on the power play the Canucks finished 0-for-4, the Blues 2-for-3.

The Canucks fall two games below .500 and four points behind the Blues in the overall Western Conference standings. The Blues are one game above .500.

Expect to hear the usual dissertation postgame.

The Blues play the Kraken in Seattle on Tuesday night while the Vancouver Canucks are off until they host the Kraken on Thursday.

By the way, those moans turned to boos.

Rob Simpson

Rob Simpson has covered the NHL in five different decades. He’s authored 4 books on hockey and is a veteran TV and radio play-by-play man and reporter.