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2019 STANLEY CUP FINAL – GAME SIX (BEST-OF-SEVEN)
BOSTON 5, ST. LOUIS 1 (SERIES TIED 3-3): Brad Marchand scored on a first period two-man advantage, goalie Tuukka Rask made 28 saves, and the Boston Bruins scored four times in the third period on their way to a 5-1 win over the St. Louis Blues in game six of the 2019 National Hockey League Stanley Cup Final Sunday night at Enterprise Center in St. Louis.
The win ties the best-of-seven series at three games each and forces a seventh and deciding game Wednesday night at Boston’s TD Garden.
Before the game, a raucous and partisan St. Louis crowd were ready to end 52 years of frustration and celebrate the Blues’ first-ever Stanley Cup championship but were quickly silenced when the Blues went two men down on penalties to Brayden Schenn and Ryan O’Reilly. Brad Marchand scored on the two-man advantage at 8:40 of the first period when he took a pass from David Pastrnak and buried a first-time shot past St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead.
It held up, thanks to the stellar goaltending of Rask and clutch penalty killing by Boston, who killed off all four St. Louis power plays, although surviving some close calls, the closest coming in the second when a puck deflected high in the air and onto Rask’s back and dropped perilously close to the goal line, where it was quickly cleared.
The Bruins made it 2-0 early in the third period when a bouncing shot from Brando Carlo somehow eluded Binnington and went into the net at 2:31. Boston then made it 3-0 when rookie Karson Kuhlman, playing for the first time since April 30 in the Bruins’ opening series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, scored his first career playoff goal at 10:15 to make it 3-0.
The Blues did pull back to 3-1 when O’Reilly scored at 12:01 on a shot that looked to have been saved by Rask off his leg, but after a review by the NHL Situation Room in Toronto, replays showed the puck had crossed the line in its entirety, allowing the goal that gave St. Louis hope.
Whatever hopes the Blues had in coming from behind to send themselves and their fans into dreamland were ended when Pastrnak scored at 14:06, and then Zdeno Chara, playing his second consecutive game with a broken jaw, scored an empty-net goal with 2: 19 left to make the 5-1 final in favor of Boston.
Before the game, Blues national anthem singer Charles Glenn gave his farewell performance to the pumped-up crowd. Glenn, 67, is retiring as anthem singer after 19 years due to illness, and after his rendition, he received a loud and long standing ovation from a very-appreciative fan base.
Binnington made 27 saves for the Blues.
The series now goes to its 17th deciding game seven since the current format was adopted in 1939, the first since 2011, when the Bruins won at Vancouver 4-0 to claim its most recent Cup. The decider will be played Wednesday night, with a face-off time of 7 p.m., and will be televised on the NBC Television Network nationwide, and locally on KSDK-TV.
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