When Jordan Binnington tends to see the kind of shot volume he saw Thursday against the Toronto Maple Leafs, the St. Louis Blues goalie more times than not comes out on the winning end of these types of matchups.
It wasn’t one of those games in which Binnnington was standing on his head bailing the Blues out of poor execution after poor execution in their 5-1 win against the Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday, but it was just a straight, solid performance all around for the Blues’ tendy.
As the player of the game, he simply looked sharp from start to finish and was only beaten by a shot that deflected in off Blues defenseman P.O. Joseph.
Binnington ended a personal three-game skid and turned in his best performance of the season, making 30 saves over the final two periods.
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There was a sequence there in the last few minutes of the first period in which Binnington made 4-5 saves to keep the game at 3-1. If one of those goes in, it would have bee a chaotic third period. But keeping it at a two-goal advantage and allowing the Blues to extend the lead, despite having to make 14 more saves in the final 20 minutes, made for a comfortable situation.
Forward Jordan Kyrou, who had two assists and was outstanding in the game, deserves strong consideration here and was THN’s player to watch heading innto the matchup. But when a team’s backbone is playing as well as Binnington was, it filters throughout the rest of the lineup.
