If the position of “St. Louis” after four games of the Western Conference finals can be called critical (1-3 in the series), then in the middle of the fifth it can be characterized by the word “catastrophic”. On his own ice, “Colorado” simply crushed the opponent (18-9) in shots in the starting period and sent him one after another to the puck gate. At the start of the second period, when Gabriel Landeskog successfully put the stick under Devon Toews’ throw, some wives of the Blues’ hockey players were probably looking at travel booking sites – after 35 minutes of playing time, few had any doubts. husbands went on vacation.

However, Craig Burubi had a trump card, which did not help him much in this encounter. The Russian hockey players who dragged the team in the regular season and the first-round duel against Minnesota scored some points in the games against Avalanche, but they certainly didn’t pull off the lead role given to them. Fortunately for the Musicians, the gun hanging on the wall of their dressing room exploded at just the right moment.

Vladimir Tarasenko was the first to start – he ambushed an opponent’s rebound in the left starting circle and drove the puck into the net. He also seemed to be giving a signal to his partners: “Guys, nothing has been decided on this drama yet! Let’s get the hell out of that glorified Colorado!”

Colleagues of the Russian Tank heard the call of the leader and rushed! Pavel Buchnevich took the puck into his goal, dragged it across the field and put it on Robert Thomas’ stick.

And Aleksey Toropchenko was one step away from the title of “The author of the most spectacular goal of the match”, trying to drive a bouncing puck into the net, but in the end he became the author of only one assist. True, his joy from this was no less unbridled.

The men in white uniforms were ready to finish off an opponent who was floating and began to miss one blow after another, but at that moment they themselves missed the approaching one in the head. With less than 3 minutes of regular time, Nathan McKinnon hit St. He branded all of Louis’ previous efforts as “empty”.

However, the “Bluesmen” who gathered their courage could not be stopped not only by McKinnon, but even by a meteorite, at that moment he fell on the roof of the “Ball Center”. They calmly waited for the last minute, calmly removed the goalkeeper and played the sixth superfluous less calmly – Tarasenko and Buchnevich got an assist.

What was missing from this hockey thriller? That’s right, the points of the fourth Russian hockey player “St. Louis” Ivan Barbashev. This injustice was corrected in overtime – the Russian simply cornered the puck and then Tyler Bozak did the whole thing himself: he took a hockey ball, dropped it on the blue line, once again captured the black puck, was thrown by Nick Leddy after failing, and eventually one of the biggest Missouri towns. made. 5:4 in the match, 2-3 in the series and a lot of unrealistic feelings for the Blues hockey players that could seriously help them in the next game or games. Everything was clear in the middle of the fifth game with this series, now nothing is clear.