Well, that winning streak by the St. Louis Blues ended with a rebounding thud.
It was not the perfect scenario playing their third in four games, the second of back-to-back sets and sixth game in nine days, but for the Blues, it was not meant to be after getting doubled up by the Dallas Stars, 6-3, at American Airlines Center on Sunday.
The Blues (29-27-6) had a chance to move into the second wild card in the Western Conference with a win even though the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks each have games in hand but the loss leaves them one point behind the Flames, current occupiers of the second wild card after a 2-1 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday, and Canucks, who were off.
Zack Bolduc scored his fourth goal in four games, Dylan Holloway reached the 20-goal mark in his first season with the Blues and his third goal in as many games, fourth in five, and Nathan Walker added a goal by the fourth line.
The Blues doubled up the Stars (39-19-2) in shots, 42-21, but could not get the job done to begin a six-game road trip.
Let’s look at Sunday’s Three Takeaways:
* Blues needed more from Hofer — It was pretty obvious that the Blues would turn to Joel Hofer after Jordan Binnington improved to 5-0-1 his past six starts making 25 saves on Saturday in a 4-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings.
Playing the second of a back-to-back, with travel, the Blues were going to need their tendy to make the saves and allow the team to get into a flow with some tired legs to start.
But in fact, it was the opposite. The Blues played a pretty darn good first period and probably deserved a lead.
They outshot the Stars 14-9 and had a strong territorial advantage but Hofer wasn’t good enough.
He allowed three goals on nine shots and was pulled from the game for Binnington, who finished the game.
But for a guy that’s listed at 6-foot-5, even on the TNT broadcast it was mentioned that Hofer played small.
All three goals the Stars scored (Mason Marchment, Matt Duchene and Wyatt Johnston, who had a hat trick), were scored high with Hofer making his large frame smaller than needed.
The Marchment shot was a good one picking the top corner from the right circle, but looking at the Duchene goal at 13:28 that made it 2-1, it started before the puck even got on Duchene’s stick, Hofer looked like he stumbled a bit on the initial chance but in getting back up, he seemed too casual in resetting himself and then went down giving Duchene the look over his shoulder:
And what I thought…