Blues power play comes up empty in Game 2 loss to Stars

ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Blues had one final chance to tie a game they trailed throughout on Saturday when they were awarded a fifth power play with 2:45 remaining in the third period.

However, like in the rest of the day, St. Louis failed with its man-advantage.
The Blues went 0-for-5 on the power play in their 4-2 loss to the Dallas Stars in Game 2 of the Western Conference Second Round at Enterprise Center.
RELATED: [Complete Blues vs. Stars series coverage]
The Stars evened the best-of-7 Stanley Cup Playoff series. Game 3 is Monday in Dallas.
The Stars, who have killed off 21 of 22 power plays in the playoffs, allowed eight shots on the five power plays.
"We had some good looks," Blues forward Jaden Schwartz said. "Obviously [Stars goalie Ben Bishop] made some good saves. We hit some sticks and couldn't seem to get the bounce on our stick at the right time."
The Blues got their final power play when Stars forward Roope Hintz, who had two goals and one assist, was called for delay of game when he flipped a backhand into the stands.

The Blues, who had a total of 9:36 of power-play time during the game, including 24 seconds of 5-on-3 in the first period, couldn't convert even when they pulled goalie Jordan Binnington with 1:40 remaining in regulation for 55 seconds of 6-on-4.
"It was great, great PK from us," Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen said. "Great blocks and great cut passes and it was really good. Good play by us."
Blues coach Craig Berube felt there could have been more time with the 6-on-4 had St. Louis not turned the puck over. Center Ryan O'Reilly won the face-off but promptly turned it over trying to make a backhand pass and enable Dallas to get a clear.
"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," Berube said. "We got some good looks. They did a good job up ice on us and disrupted our breakout at times. Winning the face-off is important, obviously.
We lost some draws and kills your momentum a little bit. We had some good looks but not enough.
"We've got to do a better job of little things, like in the breakout, better execution, and face-offs, execution too. That will help for sure."

Schwartz, who scored St. Louis' second goal 1:48 into the third period to make it 3-2, felt the Blues failed to take advantage of a tired penalty kill unit.
"Yeah, 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."
Unlike Dallas' second and final power play at 12:39 of the third period, in which the Stars had nine shots on goal and sustained zone time, the Blues had issues with their zone entries, and when they started with the face-off in zone, they won 30 percent of those draws (3 of 10).
"They do a good job of getting up ice," Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said of the Stars. "I think just advancing it past them and make sure that we get in the zone cleanly, but obviously that's easier said than done. We'll take a look at the video and kind of go from there."