ST. LOUIS _ The Blues and Stars will go to Dallas with the series tied at one win apiece after the Stars scored three goals in the first period and made them stand up for a 4-2 win over the Blues in Game 2 on Saturday at Enterprise Center.
Game 3 is Monday at 7 p.m. in Dallas.
Jordan Binnington, named a finalist for the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year earlier in the day, didn't lack for work, facing 34 shots, but it was the Blues' slow start that set the tone for the game and put them in a hole they couldn't get out of. The Blues were 0 for 5 on the power play with eight shots on goal.
"It's not going to be easy," Binnington said. "These teams are here for a reason. Both are good and both can play, so ... we're going on the road tied 1-1."
"It's going to be tight," coach Craig Berube said. "Both teams play good defensive hockey, both goalies are playing well. Our power play could have helped us tonight, it didn't. That might have made the difference in the game."
"It's important," Dallas goalie Ben Bishop said. "Obviously, you just want to get a win in Game 1 or Game 2, no matter how you do it. You scratch and claw all playoffs, it doesn't matter how you do it. It's not always going to be pretty. You just have to work hard and that's what we ended up doing."
Jaden Schwartz made it a one-goal game at 3-2 1:48 into the third period when he redirected a shot by Colton Parayko into the net for his fifth goal of the postseason. Schwartz had Mats Zuccarello of Dallas on his back and made slight contact with Ben Bishop on the play, but after a challenge by Dallas, the goal stood.
That was the beginning of an intense third period with chances both ways. Oskar Sundqvist had a breakaway midway through the period that Bishop saved and Jordan Binnington made back-to-back saves, first on a breakaway by Jamie Benn and then Tyler Seguin's rebound attempt. With 7 { minutes to go, Ryan O'Reilly had a redirection on a feed from Pat Maroon but Bishop saved it.
Fourteen seconds later, David Perron was called for interference, setting off a power play in which Dallas had nine shots on goal, and Binnington stopped them all.
The Blues had a power play with 2:45 to go and pulled Binnington halfway through for a 6-on-4 but couldn't score. Roope Hintz put in an empty met goal with 3 seconds remaining.
"We ended up with the puck on the faceoff with the power play and made a bad play and gave it back to them," Berube said. "We get the puck there, get set up, we can get our goalie out a lot quicker and get 6 on 4 with more time."
"Through the neutral zone we could have just chipped it in there better and create some zone time," Schwartz said. "They were pretty tired there at the end. We missed that a couple times, got a couple blocked and just didn't execute it as well as we needed to."
The Blues had two full power plays in the second period and one that carried over from the first, but couldn't take advantage of them. The last one was the most promising, with the Blues getting off four shots on goal. The others didn't have much to recommend.
The Blues also killed off a Dallas power play in the second.
Ivan Barbashev was banged up in a collision with teammate Vince Dunn and left the game. Later in the period, he was back on the bench, but didn't return to the ice until the start of the third period. At various points in the period, Robert Thomas and Oskar Sundqvist were also banged up, and the Blues had to scramble their lines for much of the period.
The closest the Blues came to scoring in the second was on a shot by Perron that hit off the end boards, bounced back toward the goal, hit off Bishop's pads and was sliding toward the goal when Bishop reached back and swiped it away with his glove, inches from crossing the line.
It was not a solid first period for the Blues defensively, as Dallas got their goals shooting with minimal coverage at open sections of the net. Parayko had the first goal for the Blues.
"They took advantage of some opportunities they had there," Schwartz said. "Our puck play wasn't as good, wasn't as sharp as it usually is. They took advantage and executed on their opportunities. We did a good job climbing back, but that's a lapse we can't have."
Dallas went ahead 1-0 on a goal by Hintz. Maroon couldn't get the puck out of the Blues zone, Mats Zuccarello skated the puck out from behind the net and found Hintz pretty much alone to Binnington's right and he fired it in.
At 6:56 into the period, Vladimir Tarasenko and Jamie Benn both went off for roughing, setting up an eventful four-on-four which would see three goals get scored.
Dallas went first, with Miro Heiskanen finishing off a two-on-one with Hintz. After Heiskanen got around Binnington, he had an open net to shoot into to make it 2-0.
Parayko got the first goal for a Blues defenseman this postseason 46 seconds later. After Perron kept the puck in the attacking zone, Ryan O'Reilly fed Parayko at the blueline and he slowly crept in before beating Ben Bishop to make it 2-1.
The one-goal deficit didn't last long. Twenty-six seconds later, before Parayko's goal had even been announced, Dallas scored on another two-on-one, this time with Jason Dickinson moving the puck around a sliding Alex Pietrangelo to Mattias Janmark for the goal.
