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Cam Fowler and Pavel Buchnevich put the St. Louis Blues on their backs on Thursday night, powering a convincing 7-2 drubbing of the Winnipeg Jets in Game 3 of their first-round series at Enterprise Center.
Buchnevich recorded his first career postseason hat trick and added an assist, while Fowler exploded for a goal and four assists in the triumph. His five points set a Blues record for most by a defenseman in a playoff game, per NHL.com's Lou Korac. He's also just the eighth blue liner in league history to accomplish the feat.
“I’m thankful. I’m happy that I was able to contribute and help our team get a win,” Fowler said afterwards, per Korac. “It’s a special thing for me and having my family here and being back in the playoffs, but it’s over now. It was a special night, but all it really is is one game. It helped us get back in the series and now our attention has to shift to Sunday.”
The 33-year-old continued: “Getting off to a good start in front of our fans and using our momentum to our advantage, that’s part of playoff hockey. Winnipeg was a difficult place to go in and play with their fans. We wanted this to feel the same, and our fans showed up and made it loud and supported us all night and just like they have all season. We used that to our advantage and came out with a really good start and it helped us establish some momentum in the hockey game.”
It was a must-win game for the Blues, who couldn't afford to fall into an insurmountable 0-3 hole against the 2024-25 President's Trophy winners.
St. Louis looked like the better team all night, scoring three goals in the first period and eventually chasing Hart Trophy frontrunner Connor Hellebuyck in the third. With that, the Blues are back in business, down 2-1 in the series but with an opportunity to knot things up on Sunday afternoon in Missouri.
Blues still alive against Western Conference's best team
Both Games 1 and 2 in Winnipeg were close; the Jets won 5-3 in the opener and 2-1 in Game 2. But the Blues controlled play from start to finish on Thursday night, proving that they can hang around with the league's most effective regular-season team.
“I just thought that the attitude we had … we started the other two games really well, and what I liked was the fierce, competitive nature in our attitude for 60 minutes,” said St. Louis head coach Jim Montgomery, per Korac. “The start was incredible. We were aggressive, we did the things we wanted to do to make sure that we were going to get more scoring chances, and we did get more scoring chances.”
The last time these two teams met in the postseason, the Blues defeated the Jets in six games in 2019 before marching all the way to their inaugural Stanley Cup championship. It's still an uphill climb, but Thursday's seven-goal outburst was certainly encouraging for a team that set a franchise record with 12 consecutive wins late in the regular-season.
Puck is set to drop on Game 4 between the Central Division rivals just past 1:00 p.m. ET on Sunday afternoon.
