3 Reasons St. Louis Blues Can Beat Colorado And 3 They Won’t
Every time the NHL playoffs roll around, there are book makers, analysts and prognosticators that all have their best ideas about who will win each series and in how many games. Due to multiple factors, the St. Louis Blues are not expected to go far in the 2021 playoffs.
As soon as the Blues knew they’d be playing the Colorado Avalanche, the odds makers were against the Blues. MoneyPuck only gives the Blues a 15.7% chance to advance to the second round, which is the lowest out of any NHL playoff team.
The odds for the Blues to win a short series are even slimmer. If you divide up the 15% chance, it looks even worse.
The Blues are given a 1% chance to sweep and 2% to win in five games. The odds go up to win in six or seven games, but it’s still just 6% for either of those.
While those numbers seem to be a slap in the face, there is reasoning behind it that is not bias. The truth is the Avalanche enter the playoffs as the better team on paper.
However, the NHL has proven in recent years that being better on paper means absolutely nothing. We need look no further than 2019 when everyone thought the Tampa Bay Lightning would sweep every team and win the entire thing. They got swept in the first round by Columbus because they were not playoff ready.
With all that in mind, let’s take a deeper look to why the Blues won’t beat Colorado and some reasons they will.
Won’t: Speed
They say speed kills. While I’ve yet to really figure out who “they” are (aliens perhaps?), the bottom line is that is a true statement.
Sure, it’s normally a PSA statement about driving your car too fast, but it applies to sports too. You can’t teach a player or team to be faster, so it’s hard to defend when your opponent is definitely faster than you are.
Even with the addition of younger players like Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou, both of whom have top speed and elite skating ability, the Blues are much slower than Colorado as a team. And, while Colorado is just faster as a team, their top players are so much faster.
By himself, Nathan MacKinnon could beat just about anyone on the Blues in a foot race. Beyond just the top speed, like a high-performance sports car, MacKinnon finds that speed from a stand still.
The guy can be at a slow glide and then two strides later, he’s five steps past you. While the Blues are a defensively sound team, if the Avalanche get space and time, there’s little the Blues can do to combat something like that.
The key for the Blues defenders, whether forwards or defensemen, will be to slow down the Avs before they can get going. You’ve got to find a way to disrupt passing lanes and keep the Avalanche to the perimeter.
Do that and you negate some of their innate abilities. Fail to do that and it’s going to be a mess.
Will: Physicality
As far as actual, physical size, there is not a ton of difference between the Avalanche and the Blues. As a roster, the Blues check in at an average of 6’2 and 200 lbs. The Avalanche average 6’0 and 198 lbs.
Some of that is immaterial. Devan Dubnyk checking in at 6’6 and currently injured Erik Johnson at 6’4 prop up the Avs a little.
Regardless of all that, the styles of these teams could not be much different. The Blues are the superior team when it comes to taking the body.
From a pure numbers standpoint, the Blues outhit the Avalanche by over 300 hits. The entire Avalanche roster had 926 hits in the regular season. St. Louis had 1258 spread out among their roster.
Beyond size, the Blues are just more likely to make this a physical series than the Avalanche. Even younger or smaller players on the Blues have quickly picked up on the style they’ll be asked to utilize in the postseason.
Jake Walman was known for nothing but offense. Now, he’s had a hit per game on average. That’s not overly impressive, but it showcases how the Blues are taught to take the man.
Niko Mikkola had almost 50 hits in 30 games. Robert Bortuzzo had 85 hits in 40 games and Sammy Blais had a whopping 103 hits in just 36 games played.
Additionally, Justin Faulk hit a career high for hits per game. With 128 hits in 56 games, he averaged over two hits per game. He has fully bought into the Blues system in his second year and even being smaller than your traditional physical defender, Faulk will take no crap.
The Blues ability to wear out Colorado physically is going to be paramount to winning this series. Grind them into dust the way the 2019 team did to San Jose and the Blues advance.
Won’t: Colorado at home
As tough as the Colorado Avalanche are going to be for any team in general, the fact they have home ice throughout the playoffs will make things extra difficult. That’s because the Avs were near unbeatable at the newly christened Ball Arena.
In the regular season, the Avalanche finished with a home record of 22-4-2. Only the Carolina Hurricanes had fewer losses in regulation on home ice, but they still lost more overall as they had five OTL to go with their three regulation losses.
So, any team that beats the Avalanche will have to win their own home games and pray they can steal one on the road. That’s not going to be easy.
It’s not as though Colorado front loaded all these wins either. They got even harder to beat on home ice in the last three months of the season.
From March until the end of the 2021 season, the Avalanche went 16-0-1 in their own rink. Making matters worse, you better get off to a great start on their ice too.
The Avs went 17-1-1 in Denver when they scored the first goal of the game. Colorado went 12-0-1 when they led after the first period and 17-0-0 if they had the lead after 40 minutes were gone.
Needless to say, if the Blues don’t score first and don’t lead when the second period is over, the chances of winning that game are slim and none. There are always times when those kinds of numbers can turn on a team, but don’t expect it.
Will: Blues on the road
One of the things the Blues have going for them to combat Colorado’s home record is the Blues ability to be so comfortable on the road. When the Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019, they had a similar mind set that they had no problem winning on the road.
The sad thing for the Blues is they might have finished higher in the standings had they defended their home ice the way the Avalanche did. Instead, the Blues were road warriors as they seemed to simplify their game and stay focused.
St. Louis Blues have been road warriors for years
St. Louis ended the regular season with a record of 15-9-4 on the road. That’s not a huge win/loss differential, but it shows they won plenty of games in regulation when on the other team’s rink.
The four OT/shootout losses also prove the Blues are capable of keeping things close, despite the unfamiliar surroundings. That’s the kind of mentality that any team needs to have in the playoffs.
The Blues went 6-1-3 when they scored first in the other barn. They were 9-1-3 when leading after one and 8-0-3 when leading after two on the road. Clearly that second period lead will come into play.
The will have to steal at least one game on the road. When you play a seven game series, and only have three home games at homes, it’s impossible to win without taking one on the road.
The Blues have proven they can do it. When the Blues were 100% healthy, they were one of the teams that handed Colorado one of their home losses.
The Blues beat Colorado 4-1 in the very first game of the season. While many fans focus on the 8-0 loss the following night, the fact remains even in the other two losses in Colorado, the Blues only lost by one goal in each game.
The Avalanche won, but it wasn’t convincing. Additionally, the Blues never had their full lineup together in Colorado after those first two games.
If St. Louis can continue their habit of getting off to good starts and keeping it simple on the road, they can win this series.
Won’t: Track meet
If the Blues are going to win this series, they have to figure out how to play a similar style to what we saw in 2019. Nobody expects that level of physicality, but the Blues absolutely have to be that defensively sound.
No matter how positive you want to be about this series, the bottom line is that the Blues are not going to be able to win if the games and the series becomes a track meet. The Blues have talent, but they just cannot match the scoring.
Colorado finished with 197 goals scored as a team. That’s almost 30 more goals than the Blues scored.
Even if St. Louis had a fully healthy and primed lineup, it just is not likely they could keep that kind of pace. You might survive one 6-5 or 5-3 type of game, but the Blues have to find a way to keep this series boring and slow.
As mentioned, you have to jump on the Avs early and then sit on them. The Blues need second periods like we saw in the last game of the regular season too.
Colorado scored 79 of their 197 goals in the second period. 46 of those second period goals came on home ice.
So, if the Blues are to steal one on the road, they have to grab the lead in the first and then really clamp down on the game in the second. If they let the Avalanche fly around at will and try to respond, it’s not going to work out in the Note’s favor.
Will: Goaltending
Personally, I feel like the Blues have the better defensive corps but there are arguments to be had there. If you compare player to player, it might be tighter than one would expect.
On top of that, the Avs have really done a fantastic job defensively this season. Perhaps some of that credit goes to how much they have the puck, thus not exposing any defensive weakness, but we’re splitting hairs at that point.
The one spot the Blues have a distinct and clear advantage is between the pipes. Jordan Binnington is simply better than anything the Avalanche have on their roster.
Of course, saying this, Avalanche fans will be quick to throw this season’s regular season stats in the face of Blues fans. It can’t be denied that, statistically, the Avs goalies had better years covering the regular season.
Phillipp Grubauer finished with a 1.95 goals against and a .922 save percentage. Jonas Johansson finished with 2.06 and .913. Binnington was .910 for his save percentage and 2.65.
The difference is two fold, though. Firstly, Binnington has already proven himself capable of stealing an entire playoff run, not just one series.
Nobody on Colorado has proven that, except Devan Dubnyk. Blues fans should feel exceptionally good about their chances if the Avalanche have to rely on Dubnyk in this series.
Additionally, while Binnington had lesser numbers, he also had more pressure. Binnington faced more shots by himself than both Grubauer and Johansson combined. He had more saves than both of those two combined as well.
All that means he’s battle tested. If St. Louis can get their offensive game going and this becomes a goaltending duel, even Avs fans would admit in private that they would be more comfortable with Binnington in their net. If not, they’re lying.
If nothing else, the Avalanche have shown they don’t have 100% confidence in Grubauer. Whether by injury or coach’s decision, he’s never been THE man in the playoffs.
Despite going 7-5 in 2019 and then 5-1 in 2020, Grubauer has consistently been swapped out for Semyon Varlamov or Pavel Francouz. Neither of those guys are available this time, so the Avs have to lean on Grubauer.
Absence of Doc for 2021 playoffs will be noticeable. dark. Next
There’s every chance that Grubauer could turn into the 2021 version of 2019’s Binnington. You never know until you go through it.
However, we’ve seen how good Binnington can be at his pinnacle. The guys across the way are still unknowns.
The Blues will likely need Binnington to steal a game or two to win this series, but if he’s the “We’re coming” or “Do I look nervous” Binnington, he can.