Johnson stymies San Jose
ST. LOUIS — St. Louis goalie Chad Johnson swears he wasn’t in a special zone or mind-set. The Sharks might disagree.
Johnson made 33 saves for his first shutout with St. Louis, helping the Blues beat San Jose 4-0 on Friday night.
“I don’t really think about being locked in or on,” Johnson said. “I don’t think about how I feel. You kind of go out there. You prepare. I prepare the same way every day. I just try to feel the same way or not feel at all.”
Alex Pietrangelo, Ryan O’Reilly, Jaden Schwartz, and Alexander Steen scored. The Blues have won four of five games after winning just two of their first nine.
“We’re rolling four lines good,” Pietrangelo said. “We’re using everybody in every situation. There just seems to be good jumps, so when every line is getting out there, it seems like there’s a lot of energy.”
Johnson started his third game of the season, but his second straight. He improved to 2-2-0 with his first shutout since November 2016 with the Flames.
“We’ve kind of been leaving our goalies out to dry,” Pietrangelo said. “They’ll make the first save. It’s our job to take care of the second ones. We’re doing a great job right now taking care of them.”
Pietrangelo roofed a shot past goalie Aaron Dell with both teams down a man to open the scoring in the first period. Dell allowed four goals on 31 shots to fall to 1-2-2.
“It’s been horrible,” Sharks center Logan Couture said about the team’s defense. “It’s not just the D-men, it’s forwards. It’s not good. It’s not good enough in American League level. It’s ugly right now.”
San Jose lost its second consecutive game and was shut out for the second time this season.
“The last two games haven’t been good,” Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer said. “We’re not going to make more out of it than it is. We were playing some pretty good hockey up until the last two games.”
In the second period, O’Reilly buried a feed from Jaden Schwartz for his teamleading eighth goal of the season to give him points in a career-best nine consecutive games. He is the first St. Louis player to register a nine-game point streak in his first season with the team since Doug Weight accomplished the feat in October 2001.