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St. Louis Blues Fans Punished With Team’s First Round Schedule

By Todd Panula

VANCOUVER, BC - NOVEMBER 05: Ryan O'Reilly #90 of the St. Louis Blues looks to make a pass while pressured by J.T. Miller #9 of the Vancouver Canucks during NHL action at Rogers Arena on November 5, 2019 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images)
VANCOUVER, BC - NOVEMBER 05: Ryan O'Reilly #90 of the St. Louis Blues looks to make a pass while pressured by J.T. Miller #9 of the Vancouver Canucks during NHL action at Rogers Arena on November 5, 2019 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images) /
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The St. Louis Blues might be the home team on the scoreboard in the first round. The schedule will not make it feel like it.

The St. Louis Blues might be able to flip a switch and be the dominant team of last year and they might not. Regardless, they did themselves no favors by not winning a single game in the round-robin.

Hopefully the Blues are completely acclimated to their current time zone. If not, they are going to feel like they are playing a bunch of road games in round one of the playoffs.

The NHL released the first portion of the schedule. Even if the team is fine with it, Blues fans are getting punished.

Three of the first four games the Blues will play against the Vancouver Canucks begin at 9:30 CST. With games never actually dropping the puck until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled time, that’s a lot of nights with less sleep for fans.

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Maybe some of you are in still in quarantine mode and it will not affect you. Those that work will need to stock up on coffee or energy drinks.

I understand the thought process with the schedule. It just sucks for fans.

While morning games were fun, much like the first few days of the NCAA tournament, it is likely the league did not have viewership numbers as good as evening games. They are also trying to figure out which matchups give them the best chance at the most views.

For St. Louis, given their opponent being a west coast team, that means favoring the Canadian market. For Vancouver fans, the game starts at 7:30 for them, which is a great time.

While game times are not likely to favor either team, given that it is a neutral site, it still feels like the Blues are not favored even as the higher seed.

Even within the bubble, this is going to be a very odd start time. In Edmonton, the time will be 8:30 for these games. While that is not unheard of, especially in Mountain Time Zone, it still throws you off a bit.

The lone game that will not start at 9:30 is Game 3. That is scheduled to start Friday at 5:30. Go figure that the night many people would not mind staying up later is the one the Blues get an earlier game.

As far as the team is concerned, they just need to play better. The Canucks cannot be overlooked.

On paper, Vancouver does not have the team to beat the Blues. Their goaltender, Jacob Markstrom can easily steal this series, especially given the lack of offense the Blues displayed in the round-robin round.

Next. Blues should keep Mikkola for balance. dark

Given the team’s coaching, I expect Craig Berube to have the guys as ready as they can be. He won’t let that early complacency stick around.

So, the time issue really only affects those of us in the Central Time Zone or eastward. It still sucks. But hey, this is playoff time.

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