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Go Ahead And Call It A Comeback

By Brad Lee
He stood on his head later. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)
He stood on his head later. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)
Getty Images

During my little 24 previews in 24 hours stunt, I said some rather negative things about goaltender Brian Elliott. Notice I didn't call him backup goaltender because he sure as hell played like a starter tonight in a 3-2 come from behind overtime victory. 

The game was up and down for the Blues. St. Louis gave up a first period lead before tying it up 1-1 and then falling behind by a goal again. (They actually were down 2-0. Sleep when you're dead, indeed.) They tied it up scoring their second goal of the second period on a season-high 20 shots in the second period. The third was very even and then the overtime got exciting. 

Early in, Barret Jackman took a penalty in his own end possibly saving a scoring chance. The power play for Carolina gave a lot of space on the ice and all of the sudden there was action from end to end. And for the second time this year Elliott made a "I can't believe he saved it!" save tonight in overtime. His glove hand is better than Jaroslav Halak's right now. 

You came for bullet points. I give you bullet points

 

  • Blues play Saturday night in Philadelphia. Traveling tonight, playing on the road - I can totally see Davis Payne starting Halak tomorrow night. He shouldn't. If Payne wants to keep his dressing room behind him, he has to reward good play and hard work. Elliott has simply outplayed Halak so far this season. There's no other way to put it. He deserves the minutes right now and I don't care what the situation is with traveling. 
  • The Blues are now 1-23 on the power play this season going 0-1 tonight. A blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then. The Blues power play is not as talented as a blind squirrel right now. 
  • The winning goal was all Vladimir Sobotka. He won the faceoff going low. The puck came back to Alex Pietrangelo who fought off a Hurricane. He got the puck back to Sobotk who saw Matt D'Agostini cutting to the net. Sobotka squeezed the puck between the skates of a Carolina defender, put it on D'Ags' stick and he had the equivalent of an empty net for the winning goal. It was shockingly pretty. 
  • I like a good story line as much as the next guy, but continually playing up Chris Stewart against Anthony Stewart got old before the first period ended. FSN continued to beat the dead horse. 
  • DirecTV and Fox are in a dispute. Come Nov. 1 Fox may pull all of their networks from the satellite provider. I'm tired of fans being pawns between cable channels and providers. I am not a rope to be used for tug of war. And yes, we just switched to DirecTV in August. Fuckers. GET A DEAL DONE!
  • David Backes scored his first second goal of the season. Any money on how many weeks before No. 2 3? 
  • Patrik Berglund, you awake? What happened to your breakout season? You need to breakout again? Don't be such a tease. 
Twitter is a wonderful thing. You write stuff on the Internet and in a paper sold outside Blues games, get regionally famous and suddenly you're trading tweets with the organist for the Blues...during the game. And no, he can't get them to stop playing Lady Gaga. More on that next week. 

So is this the turning point? Are we all going to feel good about tomorrow night's game in Philadelphia only to see a route? The yo yo is back up. How long before it goes back down? 

Your unbridled optimism and sobering pessimism are welcome in the comments. And thanks for stopping by. We like you. We really do.