Submitted by admin on Fri, 2005-10-07 07:00. ::
For the first time in 100 minutes of play this season, the Blues' offense came alive. And Thursday night it triggered the first pulse at Savvis Center in 18 months.
Doug Weight's redirection goal on a shot by Eric Weinrich, followed 64 seconds later by Dean McAmmond's unassisted breakaway goal, pulled the Blues to one goal behind the Red Wings.
Playing their first regular-season game in St. Louis since 2004, the Blues were making a move to square up things with the Red Wings - on the night and this season.
But 24 hours after a four-goal loss to the Wings, the Blues came up short on their come-from-behind bid, losing 4-3 to Detroit in front of a crowd of 18,354 at Savvis Center. The Blues are now 1-11-1 in their last 13 games against Detroit.
"There was a point there where we really started to take over the game," said McAmmond, whose goal made the score 4-3 with 13 minutes 50 seconds remaining in the game. "It was just too late."
Actually, the Blues had enough time; they just ran out of their allotted luck. Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios was whistled for a double-minor high stick - his fourth and fifth penalties of the game - giving the Blues a four-minute power play with 12:24 to play. The Red Wings withstood the lengthy man-advantage.
Then with 3:09 remaining, Detroit's Andreas Lilja was called for a holding penalty, putting the Blues on their 11th power play. But 15 seconds later, Blues defenseman Christian Backman took a holding penalty, negating the man-advantage.
The game ended with a scrum in front of Detroit goalie Manny Legace, but even after officials put 1.4 seconds back on the clock - after time seemingly had expired - the Blues were done.
"I thought we came out OK in the first period," Kitchen said. "I thought the second period was the period that we kind of fell off and got away from doing the things we're supposed to do. Instead of skating hard to the puck area, we were looking to interfere ... get in the way of the forechecker first before going to the puck instead of just going to the puck area."
Andy Roach handed the Blues a 1-0 lead with the team's first power-play goal of the season. The Blues were zero of nine with the man-advantage - including zero of six Wednesday - before Roach's goal, which was assisted by Weight.
Detroit turned a 2-1 first-period lead into a 4-1 advantage after the second period on goals by Mikael Samuelsson and Brendan Shanahan. Samuelsson was given credit for the goal, which went in off Weinrich's skate.
First, Weight redirected Weinrich's shot for a 4-2 deficit on a power-play goal. The Blues finished two of 11 on the power play. Then McAmmond made it 4-3.
"It just turned up that I got the puck on the wall with a little bit of speed," McAmmond said. "I just started pouring down the side. I know I had guys coming with me. I had the room, and when I got over the line, I just pounded it."
"We took a big step in the third period," Drake said. "It's something we can definitely build off. Yeah, we lost. But we can build off that and hopefully use that momentum going into Saturday."
"That's a thing where you have to hold onto what it was that helped you get some goals. You've got to hold onto that and try to copy that every period."
This is cache, read story here
