Blues riff

Up in Banff, Alberta -- God's backyard or something like it -- Garry Unger is smiling today. Red Berenson, too, on the campus of the University of Michigan. Bob Plager has no doubt already laid hands on Lord Stanley, and, out there in the Great Beyond, his brothers Bill and Barclay, and Noel Picard, are no doubt saying, "Drink one from the Cup for me."

They were all in on the ground floor for the St. Louis Blues, back when the world was young. They were foils for Bobby Orr and that Superman goal that became the most iconic photo in hockey history. And now?

Now the Bruins are their foils, watching tearfully as this generation of Blues parade around Boston's ice shouting "(Effin') rights!" and hoisting the -- what's this? -- Stanley Cup.

Half a century and more they all waited for this. (Effin') rights, indeed.

That it of course finally happened in the least likely manner possible hews not only to the physics of the sporting universe, but to the physics of hockey. Part of the reason the chase for Stanley is the best of all chases is that, in hockey, nobody knows nuttin'. Its playoffs are the least predictable in sports. Its narratives defy Hollywood; only in hockey could the Mighty Ducks film franchise not only be completely plausible, but might actually be more real than reality itself.

Lore and legend has already enshrined the fact that the Blues were dead last in the entire National Hockey League on January 3. That is oh-come-on enough. But then you throw in this: In this oh-come-on run to the Stanley Cup, the Blues were 10-3 on the road in the playoffs.

Nobody goes 10-3 on the road in the playoffs. Nobody. Oh, come on.

Yet the Blues did it. And if it came out of nowhere, consider the guy wearing jersey No. 50 and standing on his head down there in the St. Louis goal.

Jordan Binnington saved the Blues in the first period last night, saved them again as they grimly clung to a 2-0 lead, saved them with a pad save from beyond space and time as the Bruins desperately tried to catch the Blues in the third period. One of the basic tenets of hockey is that the reason its playoffs wander so often from the marked path is the outsized effect of goaltending in a short series. So it was this time, as Binnington went 16-8-2 in the playoffs with a 2.16 goals-against.

But you know where he was for almost half the season?

In San Antonio, Texas. Playing for the Rampage of the American Hockey League.

This was pretty much the normal for the 25-year-old Binnington, who'd been knocking about in various outposts in the minors for eight seasons. Alert hockey fans in Fort Wayne will remember him playing in Memorial Coliseum in the 2013-14 season, when Binnington was between the pipes 40 times for the hated Kalamazoo Wings. He went 24-13-3 with a 2.35 GA for the Wings that winter.

Five years later he was in San Antonio. Three months after that he was in goal for the Blues. Five months after that he was playing the game of his life, on the road, in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Oh, come on.

As in, "Come on. Raise that Cup one more time."