How have you been killing time awaiting the return of playoff hockey? For me, I locked myself in a meat locker since March because the world has been bad enough, the only thing that could make it worse is having to wait months for the Stanley Cup Playoffs to start. Now that I’m thawed out, I’m back to pumping hockey music (Nickelback) and calling everyone pigeons. The NHL is back, the Blues are back, but unfortunately all games will be played in, our apologetic sister to the North, Canada. That means instead of the drunk strangers pissing you off at Enterprise by yelling “SHOOOOOOT!”, it will probably be your friends and family on the couch at home. Before the real playoffs start for the Notes, they will have to play through a seeding round among the top-4 teams in the Western Conference.
Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta will play host to the entirety of the Western Conference portion of games for the rest of the season. This includes play-in series for eight teams and seeding games for the Blues, Stars, Avalanche, and Golden Knights. This also allows for people in Edmonton to be able to say the Western Conference Finals will be played in Edmonton, something they haven’t been able to say much since Gretzky was ripping grounders in the 80s. If I can level with you, I really don’t believe the seeding games mean that much. Winner of the round-robin style tournament gets “home ice advantage”, which means nothing unless all dark jerseys are blessed by a shaman or something. It also means less considering whoever finishes last gets the chance to play two teams that are anemic defensively in the Blackhawks and the Oilers. With that being said, I believe the Blues are poised to have a good showing even after a less-than-stellar performance in their exhibition game against the Hawks.
The key to having a lot of success in the playoffs: health, and the Blues have that. There are no major injuries to the lineup since the season was put on hold and they will be getting back their biggest scoring threat, Vladi Tarasenko. Ivan Barbashev will be taking an exit soon for the birth of a child, but should be back soon after. With the roster being much of the same as last year’s postseason run, there shouldn’t be much doubt that they can do it again. The biggest question marks come from the defense, not so much the talent, but how some guys like Vince Dunn will react in a bigger role in these playoffs. There are a lot of minutes to eat after the unfortunate situation that happened to Bouwmeester, who was a key part of the Cup run last year with his stellar work with pairing mate, Parayko. There will be a couple tough tests for the Blues in the return with two teams that have given them a challenger earlier in the season in the Avalanche and the Golden Knights. The first game they will have in the tournament will be against Colorado, maybe the most formidable opponent in all of the Western Conference.
The Blues take on the Avalance Sunday at 5:30PM CT in the Edmonton bubble, which expects to be a showcase of two well-oiled machines. The Avalanche are as talented as a hockey team can get, with a strong forward group and one of the future stars of the league on defense in Cale Makar. Lead by the elite talent that is Nathan MacKinnon, this team is dangerous and can put up big numbers. This will be a big test for Binnington in the first game of record in months, but the Blues should be just as much of a challenge for Philipp Grubauer, the expected netminder for Colorado. This one is poised to be an ice-wrecker with two teams excited to be back on the ice and ready to make their run to the Stanley Cup. The players aren’t the only ones, the city of St. Louis is ready to see that beautiful chalice raised by Pietrangelo once again, and it all starts Sunday in Edmonton.
Cracked Pavement Sports 