Blues are St. Louis proud in Winter Classic

ST. LOUIS — Three months before the Cardinals open the 2017 season with a primetime home game against the rival Cubs, Busch Stadium served as the epicenter for another St. Louis-Chicago showdown on Monday afternoon.

In a spectacle that brought together the city’s two professional sports teams, the Cardinals lent their stadium to the Blues and Blackhawks for the National Hockey League’s ninth Winter Classic. With 46,556 fans in the ballpark and an overflow crowd packed inside neighboring Ballpark Village, the Blues used a pair of third-period goals by Vladimir Tarasenko en route to a 4-1 victory.

“As I told the players, once the puck’s dropped, it’s 85-by-200 [feet], and it’s a glassed-in hockey rink. It’s just almost overwhelming to look around,” Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said after the win. “I think the thing that’s really interesting is the feel I got from a baseball standpoint — I could hear what everybody was saying to us as we were coming on and off the ice. I think for our players that was a great experience to feel like you were a player of another sport.”

Busch Stadium joined Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Citizens Bank Park and Nationals Park as the fifth Major League Baseball stadium to host the event. Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III and Blues chairman Tom Stillman nudged the NHL for years to consider St. Louis as a Winter Classic site, and the NHL’s decision to bring the game to St. Louis at this moment seemed fitting.

For a city that lost its National Football League franchise almost exactly one year ago, Monday’s game offered the Blues and Cardinals the chance to come together and showcase St. Louis as a vibrant sports town.

“[When the Rams left], people questioned, ‘What kind of sports city is that?’ Stillman said. “I think St. Louis has demonstrated …

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