ST. LOUIS — Comedian Chris Rock was appearing next door to the Scottrade Center, at the Peabody Opera House.
That show probably had more intensity than the St. Louis Blues’ 3-2 win over the Avalanche in the regular-season finale for both teams Sunday night. It wasn’t awful hockey as much as it lacked an emotional edge. But that was little surprise.
The Blues came into the night locked into third place in the Central Division and a first-round playoff series against the second-place .
The Avalanche came into the night locked into NHL-worst notoriety and the franchise’s third consecutive absence from the postseason, its sixth in the last seven years.
For those looking for rays of hope, winger had a goal — in the second period as the Avalanche came back from a 1-0 deficit — to finish his rookie season with 20 and enable the Avalanche to avoid the additional ignominy of not having a single 20-goal scorer. Rantanen originally also was credited with the Avalanche’s first goal of the game, at 4:03 of the second, but a postgame scoring change switched the credit to . Late in the period, though, Rantanen beat Blues goalie Jake Allen, and after the game, that went from being his 21st to his 20th.
“Of course, it’s a good milestone,” said Rantanen, 20. “But it’s such a tough season for the team, it’s tough to be too happy. I’ll try and do it more often too.”
But the Blues got two goals in 79 seconds early in the third to regain the lead. Vladimir Sobotka, playing his first game after his return from a three-season sabbatical in the Kontinental Hockey League, tied it at 3:20 before Vladimir Tarasenko beat for his 39th of the season at 4:39. And the Blues went on to the win that made them 46-29-7 for the season.
The 2016-17 Avalanche will go into the league annals with a 22-56-4 record and 48 points, the lowest total in the league since the expansion 1999-2000 Atlanta Thrashers went 14-57-7-4 for 39 points before the shootout era. Colorado’s previous lowest totals in full 82-game seasons were 68 points (30-44-8) in 2010-11 and 69 points (32-45-5) in 2008-09.
BOXSCORE:
That fate has been clear for a long time, though. About all that had to be done was plug in the final numbers in this horrible season that unraveled after a decent 9-9-0 start that set up a five-game homestand as the chance to legitimize itself as a threat to make it back to the postseason in its first year under coach and the fourth since took over as the head of the hockey operation’s front office.
That homestand was an 0-4-1 disaster, starting a 4-24-2 slide that turned the season into a dumpster fire.
But that finally has been extinguished. By the schedule.
“We’ve known that this day was coming for quite some time,” said Bednar. “We knew it was going to be done, so right now my emotions are with this particular hockey game. We did a lot of good things. We went through our lineup twice in the third period and couldn’t get out of the zone and they scored two goals.”
Footnotes. The Avalanche Sunday returned Rocco Grimaldi, Anton Lindholm and Duncan Siemens back to the San Antonio Rampage, so all four could finish the season there. The Rampage played Bakersfield at home Sunday, and now have three season-ending games against Texas this week … The Avalanche players tentatively were planning a group final outing to Monday night’s Rockies-Padres game at Coors Field.
