Friday night in St Louis, the Blues got a 33 save performance from Chad Johnson in a 4-0 win over the San Jose Sharks.
“I don’t really think about being locked in or on,” Johnson said. “… I just try to feel the same way or not feel at all. You just go out there. You work hard. You’re focused in the moment. What happens at the end of the day is the result that you get from your preparation. I felt I’ve been ready to go here and felt good with my preparation throughout the game. I’m just happy with getting the two points.”
Johnson has won his last two starts in stellar fashion with 58 straight saves, 0.50 goals-against average and a gaudy .986 save percentage.
“Chad was good; you’re not going to have a game where you don’t give up scoring chances, especially against a team like that,” St. Louis coach Mike Yeo said. “You’re going to give up some stuff, and I thought he was strong. I thought they slung a lot of pucks at the net and I thought he did a good job of controlling rebounds, steering them away.”
The Blues have won four of their last five games.
Jaden Schwartz, Alexander Steen, Ryan O’Reilly, and Alex Pietrangelo scored for the Blues.
“When you have four lines that can play in all situations, it’s difficult to deal with,” Pietrangelo said. “… It’s just hard work. When you’re using everybody in every situation, it seems like we’re going to have a little bit more jump like we did tonight.”
San Jose dropped to 8-6-3.
“The last two games haven’t been good,” Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer said. “We’re not going to make more out of it than it is. We were playing some pretty good hockey up until the last two games. I think we were [6-1-2 the previous nine games] or something like that. We’ve got to get it figured out. I think yesterday (a 4-3 loss at the Dallas Stars) we were reckless, but we had energy. Today, we were reckless without energy. We’ve got to fix all those things.”
[WATCH: All Sharks vs. Blues highlights]
Aaron Dell made 27 saves in the loss.
“We never really got going. We never found our game from the other night. Last game, we did a lot of things uncharacteristically. We’re a better team than what we’ve shown the last two games. Just the simple breakdowns, the getting out of the system, we see what happens. It can cost you,” the Sharks’ Joe Pavelski said.
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