The St. Louis Blues certainly didn’t make life easy for Dallas on Friday, but the Stars were prepared. Ben Bishop out dueled Jordan Binnington to lead Dallas to a 2-1 victory in Game 5, putting the Stars up 3-2 in the series.
Dallas gained an edge early when Tyler Seguin set up Jason Spezza, who smashed the puck past Binnington. Spezza’s glory years might be behind him, but he’s been a huge factor in this series with three goals already.
Beyond that goal the first period was fairly even, but Dallas nevertheless went into the intermission with the lead.
The edge grew to 2-0 at 6:13 of the second period when Esa Lindell’s backhander hit Blues defenseman Jay Bouwmeester in the leg on its way to the net. Lindell had 24 career goals and none in the playoffs prior to that marker, but it proved to be the game-winner.
With the game slipping out of their reach, the Blues significantly altered their lines and it seemed to help.
New lines
Schwartz-Schenn-Tarasenko
Fabbri-O’Reilly-Perron
Maroon-Bozak-Thomas
Barbashev-Sundqvist-Steen
— Jeremy Rutherford (@jprutherford) May 4, 2019
St. Louis got some life when Jaden Schwartz capitalized on Bishop’s mishandling of the puck to end the Stars goaltender’s shutout bid at 8:26 of the third frame. Jamie Benn was charged with a hooking penalty just 21 seconds later to give the Blues a critical power play, but Dallas killed it off.
In the end, St. Louis was 0-for-4 on the power play Friday night, which was a key to Dallas’ win. Bishop was also critical. Even though he looked bad on the Schwartz goal, Bishop still stopped 38 of 39 shots. St. Louis out shot Dallas 15-5 in the third period in a desperate, but ultimately futile attempt to alter the course of this game.
As for the fact that the Blues did look better in the third, while that’s noteworthy, it means a little less given that the Blues also had a strong third in their 4-2 loss to Dallas in Game 4. That didn’t seem to provide them with any momentum leading into Game 5 and the same might prove true for Game 6.
St. Louis’ back is against the wall now. Either they bounce back in Game 6 or their season is done.
Blues-Stars Game 6 from American Airlines Center will be Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. ET on NBC
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Ryan Dadoun is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @RyanDadoun.