St. Louis Blues: Who Cares About Experience When It Comes To Game 7

The St. Louis Blues enter Game 7 with very little championship pedigree on their roster. At this point, it does not matter much.

The St. Louis Blues will be playing in their first ever Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final. If you listen to most of the media outside the St. Louis area, and even some in the city limits, the fact that the Blues don’t have anyone that has been there before is a big reason they won’t win. Balderdash, I say.

Before I start, I do find it ironic to spend an entire article trying to shoot down one of the biggest clichés in sports while believing in signs and signals. So, for those that look for those things too, Phil Collins’ One More Night came on the radio today. The lyrics say it all by saying just give me one more night, as in the Blues have one more night to give us their all.

Most fans fully expect the Blues to show up to this game and pour their heart onto the ice. Anything less would put a very bad stamp on what has been a fantastic story.

At this point, however, it merely comes down to two very good teams battling it out against one another for a league championship. All this other talk is merely white noise perpetuated by those that have to fill air time and I know all about having to do that.

When you think about it, what does experience really have to do when it comes to a Game 7? You can argue it makes a difference over the course of an entire series.

I might even argue it made a gigantic difference for Game 6. The Blues will never admit it, but they seemed overwhelmed by the moment.

Hearing all the things players have to plan out for even the possibility of a win is mind-boggling. You have to plan everything down to the little details like who is going to be allowed on the ice during the Stanley Cup ceremony. For a team and players that have never gone through that, I can get how it might throw you off your game.

Now, the Blues are on the road, where they seem the most comfortable anyway. You might still have to form a list of people that could come on the ice, but there will be so many fewer people to worry about that that excuse is out the window.

It all boils down to playing one more game. That is all you have left and all you really need to worry about.

The Blues no longer need to worry about any suspensions. They can be as physical as they want, within the rules since they need to stay out of the penalty box.

When it comes to a seventh and deciding game, experience is overrated. We need look no further than to examples presented by the city hosting the Blues

The Boston Bruins are getting all this credit due to having been there before. How many guys on their Stanley Cup winning team in 2011 had been there before? Very few, if any, is how many.

Nobody had really even known much about Tim Thomas other than he had been around the league for awhile, but he was not a household name outside of the inner hockey circles. Brad Marchand was known as a talent, but did not have the reputation as a scorer or pest. Zdeno Chara had been in the league awhile, but had not achieved much success with New York or Ottawa.

What about the Boston Red Sox. They had gone to the playoffs plenty of times, but very few on that team would have been said to have the experience the pundits think it would take to beat the New York Yankees in seven games, let alone come back from down three games to none. Both of those teams won championships because they came together and got it done.

It might have taken seven games to do it, but they got the job done. It was not because they were the more experienced team.

Experience has this odd place in the minds of hockey people because there are so many examples of it happening. The Edmonton Oilers had to lose before they could supplant the New York Islanders. The Calgary Flames had to lose before they could win. Pittsburgh had to lose to Detroit before they would ultimately win.

Clearly, that is not always the case however, despite the narrative. The 2011 Boston team had not been there before. The 2005 Tampa Bay Stanley Cup winner was not loaded with guys that had been there before.

St. Louis simply has to find their best game in the absolute last possible game of the season. Don’t worry about who gets on the ice or who might be mad or left out of a picture. Worry about 60 minutes of hockey and nobody is going to care how much experience you had.

When it all boils down to one final game to decide it all, experience prior to this night does not matter. The only thing that matters is what experience you get when that final horn sounds.