Blues Claim the Stanley Cup, Ending a 52-Year
BOSTON — When their proximity to the inconceivable can be measured in months or years instead of mere days or weeks, the members of the St. Louis Blues will reflect upon one of the most extraordinary moments of not only their lives, or the team’s 52 years in the N.H.L., but also the two and a half centuries since a pair of fur traders settled the city along the western banks of the Mississippi River.
Yet even with proper detachment, they still might wonder whether this all wasn’t some icy mirage: Did the Blues, after ranking last in the 31-team league in early January, actually win the Stanley Cup?
The Blues won the Stanley Cup.
Never before Wednesday night could that sentence be written, and so again: The Blues won the Stanley Cup.
“We’ve been waiting for this for so many freaking years, and to be from St. Louis and put this sweater on every night, holy cow,” said forward Patrick Maroon, who grew up in Oakville, Mo., about 15 miles south of St. Louis. “We brought it home.
After failing to clinch in St. Louis on Sunday, the Blues blasted the Boston Bruins, 4-1, in Game 7 at TD Garden, muzzling a crowd raring to see yet another coronation in a city spoiled by championships.
On the same stretch of Causeway Street where their last appearance in the Cup finals cratered 49 years ago, the Blues — who had missed the playoffs only nine times since the team’s inaugural 1967-68 season but had never savored their ecstatic conclusion — completed the most improbable in-season turnabout in N.H.L. history.
To punctuate it, the Blues won a third straight game in Boston. Now 6-0 on the road after a loss this postseason, the Blues dazed the Bruins with two goals late in the first period by Ryan O’Reilly and the captain Alex Pietrangelo, and two more in the third, by Brayden Schenn and Zach Sanford.
All the while, the rookie goalie Jordan Binnington unleashed his full fury on the Bruins. He capped a season that began with him ranked fourth among the organization’s goalies and ended with his stopping 32 of 33 shots, holding on to a shutout until Matt Grzelcyk scored with 2 minutes 10 seconds remaining.