St. Louis Blues: Five Reasons They Win, Five Reasons Minnesota Wins
The St. Louis Blues have just as good a chance to win this year’s first round of the playoffs as ever. Nobody would have thought that not too long ago.
The Blues have a great team on the ice, but not so much on paper. Injuries have piled up and that awful middle section of the season still has everyone worried.
Hockey is an odd sport though. It has been proven that 8-seeds can win Stanley Cups.
It might not be the norm, but that’s true everywhere. The fact that it can happen and is more likely to happen on the ice than just about any sport should always give fans hope.
Hope is all Blues fans were clinging to during the winter. Some did not even want to hold on to that.
There were those that wanted the Blues to miss the postseason, blow the team up and fire everyone as though that would solve all the franchise woes. Nothing is that simple and pro contracts don’t allow you to just send everyone away.
Taking away the simplicity of such ideas, there were benefits to missing. You get a higher draft pick for one, though this year’s draft class is quite a bit weaker.
You were not going to get an immediate NHL player out of this year’s draft even if you pick in the top-five. So, it made more sense to keep playing.
Now the Blues are in a much better spot. Financially, it helps the team with every game they play.
Extra ticket money at the gate gives the ownership group more freedom to keep spending on the team. The Blues might be more than one piece away, but at least the options might be there with tinkering.
That is looking forward to the summer though. The season is still upon us.
If you had told anyone the Blues would be playing the Wild back in December or January, we’d have said well it will be a quick four games and out. Now, there is little reason to think the Blues cannot win.
They might not win. It is hockey and anything can happen.
However, they can win and maybe even should.
The Blues are the hot team right now and that counts for a lot in the NHL. Just look back to 2015 when the Blues were the higher seed.
St. Louis had a great regular season but nothing to play for down the stretch. Minnesota was hot, came in and upset the Blues. Now the Blues have the chance to turn the tables.
First thing’s first, the idea for this story sprang from an article by our friends at HockeyWilderness. I suggest you check it out.
With that in mind, here are our five reasons the Blues will win this opening series…and five they might not.
Irresistible Force
The phrase has existed much longer, but fans of pro wrestling in the 80’s will remember this one. Gorilla Monsoon used to call certain matches as the Irresistible Object vs. the Immovable Force.
To a certain degree, that’s what we have in the Wild against the Blues. The trouble becomes the Blues are no longer the immovable object they may have once been.
The Blues defense and goaltending solidified themselves as the season went along. They got good enough, along with the scoring, to turn a negative goal difference into a +17.
Nevertheless, the Blues have allowed 218 goals in the season. Only two teams in the Western Conference made the playoffs by allowing more.
Combine that with Minnesota’s incredible offense and it’s not a great recipe for Blues success.
The Wild scored 266 regular season goals. Nobody had more in the West and only Pittsburgh had more goals in the entire league.
The Blues have calmed things down of late, but they have a bad habit of allowing bunches of goals. They also lack the ability to come back they had in previous seasons.
So, if Minnesota can jump out to a three goal advantage, it will be difficult for the Blues to hang around.
It Is Not The Top Stars
For whatever reason, the St. Louis Blues have a way of limiting the big guns of a team. So, it is typically not the Jonathan Toews or Patrick Kane’s, or in this instance the Eric Staal’s of the world that beat them.
As well as they play against the top guys, they seem to forget there is an entire full team to deal with. Thus, the mid-six and even sometimes fourth line guys are the ones that do St. Louis in.
Charlie Coyle had two goals against St. Louis this season. He had 18 for the season.
Mikael Granlund and Mikko Koivu also got the Blues for multiple goals this year. Those are talented forwards who often see top line time, but they still are not at the top of the list of players you would focus on as an outsider.
The same was true of the Blues during the regular season this year and playoffs past. Rarely is it the big guns of any team that just stick it to St. Louis.
It’s the guys that make you scratch your head. It’s the guys that are talented enough, but just not expected to have a hot series and end up doing so.
With that in mind, it would not be surprising someone like Erik Haula to have a big series. Not because he’s hot, though 15 goals is not bad, but because the Blues have a history of allowing that kind of player to do them harm.
The Wild have themselves well spread too, which makes this point even more valid. Eternal enigma Chris Stewart even had 13 goals this year.
The focus will still need to be on the top guys, but the Blues cannot afford to forget about forwards 4-12.
Up The Gut
The Minnesota Wild are about as deep up the middle as it gets in today’s league. They are not forced to use any player at center because they have so many.
That allows them to put guys on the wing if someone is not having a good faceoff night, slide guys up and down the lineup and more. In the playoffs flexibility is paramount.
On paper, four of the Wild’s top five scorers are listed as centers. Clearly not all four are playing center all the time because your fourth line center is not going to be getting enough minutes to put up 50+ points.
The fact all those guys are capable of playing through the middle makes it tougher to plan for. The aforementioned Haula is no slouch at the center spot either.
Martin Hanzal is a handful up the middle even if his stats have taken a dive. Joel Eriksson Ek is also capable of playing multiple spots too.
Faceoff wins are going to be huge in this series, especially for the Blues in their defensive end. With so much talent up the middle, Minnesota has the freedom to be more aggressive in the circle.
Who cares if someone gets kicked out? Your linemate probably has centering experience anyway. So, it becomes like team golf where someone can go for the green because the next guy can get the job done if you mess up.
The injury problems the Blues have had up the middle, most notably Paul Stastny, will compound this issue.
A Hard Lineup Top To Bottom
The Minnesota Wild have this year what the Blues had last year, plus more.
Minnesota is hard to stop from top to bottom. They don’t have those big name stars like the Blackhawks or Stars or Sharks have had, but they have solid guys each as capable as the last.
So, while the Blues have proven great at stopping the stars, what do you do if you have a team with no stars? That statement is not meant to disparage any of the Wild players either. It is more an observation.
Eric Staal is a great player with a resurgent year. You wouldn’t see his name drafted in the top portion of many fantasy drafts though.
Granlund and Koivu are very good players, shown by their 127 combined points. They aren’t superstars though.
Jason Pominville is capable of scoring. Even at a slightly advanced age, Zach Parise is still dangerous, especially if you can afford to move him further down a lineup.
Nino Niederreiter has been a thorn for the Blues in the past and had 25 goals this year. In total, the Wild have four guys with 20+ goals and 12 with double digit twine tinglers.
Their blueliners are included in there too. Two Minnesota defensemen had double-digit goals and Ryan Suter had 40 points in a down year with 9 goals.
The Wild are capable of coming at you in waves. The Blues will have to be able to withstand the tsunami that is about to wash over them.
Devan Dubnyk
Devan Dubnyk is to the Blues now what so many goaltenders have been in the past. You can rattle off the names.
Quick, Rinne, Osgood, Joseph, Crawford and more. Those guys have been almost superhuman in their ability to keep the Blues off the board at times.
Dubnyk is among those names. The Minnesota goaltender was almost single-handedly responsible for the Blues early exit in 2014-15.
The Blues did not play their best and the Wild’s scheme and defending deserve credit as well. Dubnyk was the difference maker though.
Even with their backs against the wall, the Blues managed to pepper the Wild with shots in that playoff series. Dubnyk turned aside 66 shots in the last two games of the series alone.
The Blues do seem to struggle with big goaltenders in general and Dubnyk definitely fits that bill. He’s 6’6 and very agile for his size.
The interesting thing is Dubnyk’s dominance began and continued from that playoff series. His overall regular season career record vs. St. Louis is not good.
He is 6-12-2 with a .890 save percentage and 3.22 goals against. Once that playoff series happened though, it has been tough to beat him.
He is going to be a huge X-factor. If we see the Dubnyk that put himself into the Vezina running this year, it’ll be hard to win. If we see him struggle like down the stretch, the Blues have a shot.
The Defensive Mentality
Statistically speaking, the Blues are not as good as Minnesota defensively. The Blues allowed 10 more goals during the regular season.
On top of that, Minnesota has the edge in most categories. They have a lower goals against average. Their opponents’ shooting percentage was lower. The Wild are ranked higher in goals against and goal difference per game as well.
That’s all well and good, but that’s regular season. The Blues priority, though it has slipped during this year, is primarily defense first.
That mentality is better suited to the grind that is the NHL Playoffs. The Wild are race horses, built to attack but perhaps not suited as well to the proverbial mile-and-a-half track.
It’s great to have the scorers to take on anyone and everyone. You can’t simply have an attack at all costs mentality though.
If that worked, the Pittsburgh Penguins would have more than just two Stanley Cups with their current core.
The Blues defense is not so much better that they have a clear edge. They do have a team-wide plan to defend and then spring the attack from there though.
That sort of gameplan is much better suited to the postseason and could be a big difference.
The Blues are not quite as defense oriented as they were under Ken Hitchcock, but Mike Yeo already proved he could formulate a gameplan to shut down offensive teams when he beat the Blues.
While Yeo favors a slightly more up-tempo game, he still wants guys to be sure of their defensive assignments and that way of thinking has really clicked with this current group.
Blues Are Technically Bigger
As HockeyWilderness pointed out, the St. Louis Blues technically have an advantage in size, at least from their defenders. While this may be one of those things you see on paper, but cannot tell on the ice (as was the case against Chicago last year), it still may have an impact.
The Blues are currently a little thin at the back due to some bumps and bruises. They won’t have any room for further injury as there will be no healthy defenders sitting in the pressbox. Robert Bortuzzo is nursing an injury and will not be available to start the series.
Nevertheless, of the Blues’ regulars, everyone on St. Louis is 6’2 or taller. Minnesota only has three of their main defenders even reaching the 6’2 height line.
The difference here will be the Blues ability to move the puck. Colton Parayko will be especially important in this category.
The 6’6 defender is huge and can be a physical presence. He also has the slick moves of a forward if he so chooses.
Despite his semi-permanent stay in the dog house, Jay Bouwmeester is still an excellent mover of the puck. Alex Pietrangelo is deserving of the captaincy and getting better in all areas by the week.
Joel Edmundson is more of a throwback defender, but capable of getting things done at both ends of the rink if/when necessary too.
The interesting thing is going to be the movement of the puck. From a strict scoring standpoint, the Blues are a ways behind. They have the talent back there, but several players have lengthy goal scoring droughts on the blue line.
In terms of size and mobility, the Blues have the edge. That will be key as even after Yeo left, the Wild continue to be a hard forechecking team.
St. Louis will need to use their size to brush off any hits and still get the puck out of the zone.
The Snake
If you’d have told me that Jake Allen would be more of a difference than Dubnyk earlier in the season, I’d have taken you to the asylum. Even as an Allen fan, he was struggling mightily this winter.
How the pendulum swings though. Allen has been one of, if not the best goaltender in the NHL since Yeo and Martin Brodeur took their respective positions.
Couple that with the sudden downswing of Dubnyk and you have guys at different stages of their games than when most judgments were made earlier.
Allen was fine to star the year, but plummeted to an .895 save percentage through his first 36 games. Over the last two months, the Snake has been almost unbeatable with a .938 save percentage.
As we pointed out in our end of season awards, those kinds of numbers would normally put you in the running for the Vezina.
Unfortunately, they don’t look at end of season numbers only. Dubnyk will be thanking his lucky stars for that.
His stats through the first half of the year were other worldly with a goals against sub-2.00. He was Jake Allen bad down the stretch though.
Dubnyk went 7-8-2 in the final weeks, had a stretch of games with below .700 save percentages and posted a .883 save percentage after March 7.
As was the case with Allen earlier in the year, you cannot put the entire blame on Dubnyk. That’s the lazy man’s thinking.
Still, he does not enter the playoffs as the dominating force he was earlier in the year. On the flip side, Allen is.
He might not be getting the notoriety across the league he should be, but the Snake is playing well enough to steal some games. That’s what you want from your goaltender at this time of year.
The Tank
Yes, yes. I know he doesn’t care to be called the Tank. Still, no offense to any of Minnesota’s players, but Vladimir Tarasenko is the best player either team has.
Tarasenko has a combined 116 goals over the last three seasons. Despite Blues fans’ constant whine that he needs to be better in the playoffs, he has 19 career playoff goals and 26 points in 33 playoff games played.
Until he ran out of gas against San Jose last year, he was proving to be the scorer we all wanted. Blues fans will always want someone like Brett Hull to put up a goal-per-game pace, but that’s not realistic anymore.
Tarasenko is the best scorer the Blues have had since the Golden Brett and, myself included, we should all be more appreciative.
He passes too much and is not quite as selfish as we would like. He is capable of being a difference maker even if he does not have that mentality to put the team on his shoulders at all times.
On top of his regular season accolades, he is pretty good at playing the Wild. He scored six goals in six games the last time these two met in the playoffs. Tarasenko had two goals against Minnesota this year as well.
The Blues secondary scorers are going to need to do their part. St. Louis proved they could not rely only on Tarasenko during that 2015 series with Minnesota, so they will need scoring from other parties as well.
If Vlady gets hot though, look out. He is a streaky scorer and is currently on a hot streak.
Blues fans everywhere will be hoping that continues into the second season.
Mike Yeo’s X-factor
Mike Yeo and the players can say they aren’t interested in revenge all they want. While I believe they are not short-sighted enough to only look at this series, I cannot believe there is not a little bit in each of them that would get some extra satisfaction.
The Blues have taken to Yeo like a duck to water and vice-versa. Whatever problems he had in Minnesota have yet to pop up in St. Louis and are not likely to do so out of the blue now.
The Blues have constantly proven, whether they love the coach or hate him, if they buy in then they win. That was true under Hitchcock and will remain true under Yeo.
Yeo won’t try to reinvent the wheel, but with roles almost exactly reversed from the last Minnesota-St. Louis playoff match, you can expect some similarities.
Yeo’s Wild clogged up the neutral zone like the 90’s New Jersey Devils. It was enough to make you pull your hair out and scratch your eyes, but effective.
Expect something similar from Yeo’s Blues. St. Louis doesn’t have those standup defensemen, but they are capable enough to slow players down.
On top of that, as mentioned, I think players will want to play for their new boss. Yeo might not bring it up, but it’s known how much his firing affected him.
His new guys will want to show Minnesota they made a mistake.
On top of those little factors, there is the playoff history. Yeo has won big series with Minnesota and as an assistant with Pittsburgh.
Bruce Boudreau is one of the best regular season coaches in recent history, but his teams have a history of choking in the playoffs too. Whether that is due to the coach or a coincidence remains to be seen.
Still, we have seen a much calmer Yeo than during his Minnesota times and that has reflected on the Blues. If any choking does have to do with Boudreau will be seen when the series commences.
Next: Twas The Day Before Playoffs
Yeo does have knowledge of many of Minnesota’s players, if nothing else. Their system has changed and a few new players brought in. Even so, the old boss knows enough about each guy’s weaknesses to take advantage of them.
The Blues will need any and all advantages they can get.