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It was supposed to be a dream season. The St. Louis Blues racked up a league high 114 points and came into the 2000 Stanley Cup Playoffs as one of the favorites to the Cup. Their main obstacle along the way was supposed to be the Detroit Red Wings, their biggest rival and the team they held off to win the Presidents' Trophy.
It turned out that the San Jose Sharks were the Blues biggest obstacle. One they couldn't get over.
It what may be the most disappointing loss in St. Louis sports history, the Blues lost Game7 of their Western Conference Quarterfinal Series to the Sharks 3-1 on Tuesday night, and lost the series four-games-to-three.
What went wrong?
It seemed almost everything. The Sharks scored less than three minutes into Game 7 to grab an early lead, but Blues fans didn't seem fazed. There was still over 56 minutes of hockey left to play and surely the Blues would find away to rise above the adversity, right?
Wrong.
With 10.2 seconds remaining in the first period and the Sharks still clinging to their 1-0 lead, Owen Nolan skated through center ice and let go a long slap shot from just outside the blueline that looked innocent enough. The shot somehow managed to find its way past Blues goalie Roman Turek and gave the Sharks a huge lift heading into the locker room for the first intermission. They were in a hostile environment in a game they were supposed to lose, and they found themselves with a two-goal lead after 20 minutes of play.
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The Sharks seemed to feed off the momentum, while the Blues just seemed to attempt to cling to whatever was left of their fading season. Their last hope came in the third period when Scott Young scored his 6th goal of the playoffs to cut the San Jose lead to 3-1. Shortly after that the Blues had a two-man for 29 seconds and a chance to get back into the game. But they just couldn't manage to sneak a puck past Sharks goalie Steve Shields, who did an excellent job of erasing his nightmare performance on Sunday in Game 6 to get himself mentally prepared to play one of the biggest games of his career. Shields was very solid in Game 7.
"It's great," Shields said. "This is what you play for. You want to be in these types of games."
Blues coach Joel Quenneville was not happy after the loss, but pointed to the Blues lack of breaks as a factor in losing this series.
"I've never seen as many crazy goals as I have in this series," Quenneville said. "That's not an excuse, it's a fact."
It's also a fact that the Blues have tee-times at several area golf courses today, and that they once again have to figure out exactly what pieces they are missing to finally deliver a Stanley Cup to long suffering Blues fans.
They have all summer to think about it.
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