Blues win 1st Stanley Cup with 4-1 win over Bruins
BOSTON — The 2018-19 Blues, a team once given up for dead, on Wednesday achieved hockey immortality.
The Blues completed the longest road back in hockey history with a 4-1 win over the Bruins at TD Garden, giving the franchise its first Stanley Cup in its 52-year existence. And they did it an unprecedented way, coming back from having the fewest points in the league on Jan. 3 to being a dominant team the final half of the season.
Ryan O’Reilly and Alex Pietrangelo scored in the first period for the Blues and Brayden Schenn added an insurance goal with 8:35 to go in the third. Zach Sanford, who grew up in the area and went to Boston College, scored with 4:38 to play to put it further in the bag.
Jordan Binnington stopped the first 32 shots he faced, including 12 in the first period where Boston came strongly at him and could have scored more than once, before Matt Grzelcyk scored with 2:10 to play. In the third period, with the Blues protecting a 2-0 lead, he extended his right pad to stop a shot by Joakim Nordstrom that seem fated to make it 2-1.
BLUES,
After failing in their first chance to take the Cup on Sunday at home, the Blues went where they have done best for much of this season, the road. The Blues finished the playoffs with a 10-3 record on the road, tying the NHL record for most postseason wins on the road. In the Final, they won three of four games played at TD Garden.
Never great, usually good, always cursed, the Blues are the first team in the expansion era (since 1967-68) to be last in the standings at any point after the 30th game of the season and win the Stanley Cup.
With a massive crowd watching back in St. Louis, both in Enterprise Center and Busch Stadium, the franchise’s years of suffering were finally rewarded. As the final horn sounded, it was rhapsody in blue.
The Blues, who held the distinction of having played the most games in NHL history without winning the Stanley Cup, now can claim the distinction of having the longest wait — 51 seasons — for a team to win its first championship. Previously, the title went to fellow expansion team the Los Angeles Kings, who won in their 44th season, 2011-12. (The mantel for most games without a title now passes to Vancouver and Buffalo.)
O’Reilly got the Blues started and then Pietrangelo added a goal in the closing seconds of the first period as the Blues scored twice on just four shots on goal in the first. In the second period, the Blues were outshot 11-6 but kept the Bruins off the board.
Jay Bouwmeester took a shot from the blueline that O’Reilly tipped in for the first goal with 3:13 to go in the period. That gave O’Reilly a goal in four straight games — and five goals in four games — and a point in six straight. O’Reilly is just the fourth player in NHL history to have the first goal for his team in four straight games.
O’Reilly has 22 points in the postseason are the most for a Blue in one postseason. His eight points in the Final are the most by a Blue in a career in a Stanley Cup Final, passing Frank St. Marseille.