Good morning Blues fans! Welcome to the weekend. While some of your brackets might be busted right now, the Blues are still hoping to make it into that playoff tree themselves and can take another step toward that with a win over Arizona today.
The St. Louis Blues take on the Arizona Coyotes tonight. For those of you too young to understand the reference in the story title, Acme was the company that Wile E. Coyote used to call for gadgets to hunt down the Roadrunner. Of course, they always blew up in his face. St. Louis needs to hope that happens to Arizona tonight.
The Blues and the Coyotes are going to get very friendly over the next month or so. The two teams have yet to face each other in 2016-17 and will get their entire season series played between tonight and the end of the season.
The Blues are firmly in the final wild card spot at the moment, but the L.A. Kings are still skulking around four points behind. The Kings would love it if one of their Pacific Division rivals helped them out in this instance.
St. Louis needs to avoid that. They need to avoid their usual letdown where they think the game is simple and easy and let a team without as much talent as them take over and win a game.
Arizona is nowhere near a playoff spot at the moment. In fact, the Coyotes are 18 points away from a playoff spot, so despite their young talent, they have a long way to go.
The fear that Blues fans have is these are the games they struggle in historically. The Blues seem to have no problem elevating their game to hang with the likes of Pittsburgh or Chicago. Put them against the Winnipeg teams of the last few seasons or Arizona and we see a completely different team.
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The Blues need to be the same team. They need to play the way they did against San Jose and step on some throats.
If we see that Blues team, there is little to fear. Whether we see that team remains to be seen and it is sad that we even have to worry about it instead of being confident in which squad we will get.
The Blues need their goaltending to be as good as it has been, but that is not as much to worry about these days. Win or lose, the netminders have found ways to stop pucks and give the Blues every opportunity to win.
It would also be nice to keep Vladimir Tarasenko hot. He has goals in three of his last five games and scored multiple goals twice. While there was one game in that mix where he went ghost mode, he has been more of a force to be reckoned with.
St. Louis can still make this a salvageable season. They need to put in the work as they have in recent weeks. No letdowns, no taking the foot off the pedal. Time to go to work and smash the Coyotes under an Acme anvil.
Here are your St. Louis Blues Morning Links to get your day started off right.
Springboarding off the topic I just discussed, Tom Timmerman believes the Blues’ soft schedule should help them push into the playoffs. Again, it all depends on the team not taking it easy. (STLToday)
It goes to show that nothing political ever ends. Many probably thought the new practice facility was a done deal. While it still is for the most part, there are still ongoing negotiations between the Blues and the city of Maryland Heights. (Post-Dispatch)
The Blues have some exciting prospects and seem like they have a lot more depth than we might have thought before the season. One such prospect has already gained notoriety from being mentioned by Doug Armstrong and gained more by being named to an All-Star team. (St. Louis Gametime)
While the NHL is celebrating it’s 100th year this season, they will continue to do so to start 2017-18 as well. As part of those festivities, the league will hold another Centennial outdoor game with the same two teams that started it all back in the day. (ESPN)
Jaromir Jagr will never catch Wayne Gretzky for points in a career. He has passed Gordie Howe though. Not in total points overall of course, but in points scored in his “old age”. (NHL)
Have a great day Blues fans!