Some of what's being written elsewhere as the Wild and Blues prepare for Monday's Game 3 at the X.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Jeff Gordon: Blues must make their own luck.
Good bounces lead to victory and bad bounces doom teams to defeat. The process of deciding playoff games resembles a weighted lottery.
The better a team plays, the better its odds of winning. The more breaks a team creates with hard and smart play, the more likely it will get enough good breaks to prevail.
The Blues elevated their play, so they earned the breaks that led to a 4-1 victory. But they know they must keep improving to survive this series. Game 2 could have easily gone Minnesota's way when the Wild rallied in the third period.
Wild forward Charlie Coyle made a dazzling bid to pull the Wild even. He broke down the middle, took a slick pass from Thomas Vanek, danced past T.J. Oshie in the slot and ripped a shot over Allen's glove.
The puck hit the underside of the crossbar, caromed off Allen and started rolling toward the back of the net. But Blues captain David Backes reached in just time to sweep it away to safety.
Had Coyle scored there, the Wild might have kept on rolling to win Game 2 and put the Blues into a precarious spot. History tells the Blues that 0-2 series deficits are almost always fatal.
