Blues Collar a Win and Remain Alive Against Red Wings

The St. Louis Blues took their cue from Grant Fuhr. Thirty-five years old and coming off a performance he regretted, he approached what could have been their final game of the season--and last game as a team before free agency breaks them up--defiantly and without doubts. If he was confident, why shouldn’t they be confident too?

“Being dead and giving up doesn’t work for me,” Fuhr said. “A lot of guys here feel the same way. We’re not going to surrender.”

They rarely gave up the puck and never gave up hope. Playing a solid defensive game that slowed the Detroit Red Wings in the neutral zone, the Blues clawed their way to a 3-1 victory at Joe Louis Arena Sunday. That sent their Western Conference semifinal series back to the Kiel Center in St. Louis Tuesday with Detroit holding a 3-2 lead.

A seventh game, if necessary, will be played Thursday in Detroit. The series winner will face the Stars for the West championship starting on Sunday at Dallas.

“We’re living another game,” said Blues defenseman Marc Bergevin, whose frantic dive saved a goal 35 seconds into the third period after a shot by Nicklas Lidstrom bounced off the inside of Fuhr’s left leg and spun toward the goal line. “This was a Game 7 for us and a Game 5 for them. Hopefully on Tuesday we will have the same attitude of desperation.”

Said Blues Coach Joel Quenneville: “The odds just went down a little bit lower. They were 100-1 [against the Blues]. We just cut them in half.”

Despite being one victory from clinching their fourth consecutive berth in the conference finals, the Red Wings were curiously passive for most of the game. Unable to get anything past Fuhr during a five-on-three power play early in the first period, they fell back into their old habit of looking for perfect plays instead of grinding out goals as the Blues did. They were scoreless on nine power plays and are three for 35 in the series.

“We were a little fancy in the first period and we got away with it,” winger Brendan Shanahan said. “Then it came back to haunt us later.”

Geoff Courtnall’s first goal of the series, a deflection of a shot by Bergevin at 1:44 of the second period, and an opportunistic goal by defensive center Mike Eastwood 74 seconds later killed the ready-to-party mood among the 19,983 fans. Todd Gill’s long power-play blast, which was deflected before it reached goalie Chris Osgood, put the Red Wings in too deep a hole to escape against a team playing as tenaciously as the Blues did.

The Red Wings did produce a short-handed goal by Martin Lapointe at 11:03 of the second period off a fine setup from Steve Yzerman, but Fuhr stopped 10 shots in the third period to prolong the series and the Blues’ season.

“We really didn’t play very good. We didn’t really play desperate enough, like we did the last three games,” Osgood said. “You can’t play at less than your best against a good team like St. Louis.

“Tonight was probably our worst game so far in this series. Until the third, we really didn’t play good at all.”

Hoping to stir the Blues’ dormant offense, Quenneville switched some of his line combinations. He separated center Pierre Turgeon and right wing Brett Hull, moving Hull to the left side with Pavol Demitra and Craig Conroy and putting Turgeon between Courtnall and Jim Campbell. The changes gave the Blues a spark and led to Courtnall’s most assertive game since he ran over the Kings in the first round.

“We talked about coming in here and said we’ve got nothing to lose, just go for it,” Courtnall said.

Because they did, they will play at least one more game. For Hull, who has been hampered because of a pulled groin muscle, it’s a chance to again hear cheers in the city he has called home the past 10 years instead of the jeers he heard during the Blues’ 5-2 loss in Game 4. He said he can’t afford to consider it might be his finale before departing as a free agent. “You can’t deviate from your game,” he said. “I don’t even think about that.”