Joel Edmundson, Officially Been There Before.

Joel Edmundson sneaks in from the point and puts home the @WestJet OT winner to give the Blues a Game 1 win over the Wild. pic.twitter.com/CxyPzsdyS2

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 13, 2017

I'm not here to shame those that instinctually let the pure, unadulterated joy that results from a timely playoff goal overcome them when celebrating it. That's far from the case. In fact, Zach Parise nearly throwing his arm out with a fist pump after slamming home the tic-tac-toe goal that sent the game in question to overtime served as my "oh shit, we're officially in this bitch" postseason initiation. In that same vein, Joel Edmundson - with all 3 of his regular season tallies - could have celebrated his game winning, sudden death snapshot with a goddamn double backflip and I wouldn't have thought it was an over-the-top response.

Overtime underway in Minny thanks to this goal by Parise with 23 seconds left.pic.twitter.com/54iL9QVrj2

— TotalProSports.com (@TotalProSports) April 13, 2017

That said, there's still something so awesome about being able to contain your emotions - when they are running at their wildest - and acting like you've been there before....especially when you haven't. Joel Edmundson preseason reaction to his postseason heroics was - in many ways - a bigger slap in the face to the team that was victimized by them than had he skated an entire victory lap. Ho hum. Business as usual. Like casually keeping it together when your stoned in public, Joel Edmundson champion'd that high like a goddamn boss. 

Then again, it's very possible that his celebration - or lack thereof - was so understated because he knew his team had no business winning. You should never apologize for a victory, but maybe - just maybe - his minimalistic acknowledgement of it was his way of affirming that he recognized the ridiculously fortuitous string of events led to it. The St. Louis Blues were outplayed in each and every way last night. There's not one person in their locker room - other than the man that stopped 51 pucks - that should have been happy with their performance. So maybe Joel Edmundson was just trying to go undetected in hopes that his team would mob Jake Allen seeing as he was the only person deserving of being at the bottom of that pile-up. It's either that, or he's got the most low key swag of any mid-pairing defenseman in the NHL. ​